Business Briefcase
When you think of the term businessman, what is the first image that comes to your mind? A few of you might say a suited and booted gentleman, a few others might even think of a cigar puffing, obese individual with wads of cash in his pudgy hands. But without exception, independent of the power of your imagination, all of you would have pictured the businessman with a business briefcase.
The business briefcase has achieved the kind of stereotypical association with a businessman that it is difficult to think of one without the other. Mention the word businessman and even before the shape of the person forms in your head, the business briefcase is already starkly evident. And look at any real life business man and you can be pretty sure that a business briefcase is being held in his hands. For those businessmen too affluent or successful to carry their own business briefcase, you can be sure that there are flunkies who carry it for them.
But what is it about the business briefcase that makes it the essential accompaniment of a businessman? Well, to find the answer to that question, we need to turn to the world of cinema. For decades now, Hollywood has been portraying the quintessential businessman as someone who carries around a business briefcase. For a while smugglers with wads of illegal cash, villains with fancy guns and death instruments and molls with a secret diary were also the ones to carry the business briefcase, but it is the businessman who has been the true carrier of the business briefcase all through the annals of Hollywood.
But quite frankly, the business briefcase serves the businessman rather well. For one thing, it lends an air of elegance and determination to the one who carries it. I mean, you can’t help but take someone who shows up at your office with a business briefcase in any other way but seriously. And secondly, it serves as a repository for all those documents, paraphernalia and even bulky wallets and check books that the businessman would otherwise have to carry on his person. I mean most women have the nifty tool called the hand bag that serves this purpose. And for any gentleman, the business briefcase fills the slot rather nicely.
The reason I’m talking at length about the business briefcase, in case you haven’t guessed it by now, is that I plan to get myself one. And even though I’m not yet the kind of businessman I would like to be, it never really hurt anyone to get a headstart on an intended image!
