(FORTUNE Magazine) – I was sitting at my desk yesterday, but what else is new. This young fellow who works for me was sitting on the other side of it, but so what. And I was putting a paper clip at the top of a sheaf of papers while listening with basically the corner of one lobe to what he was telling me, when he says, "Hah. That's interesting. I staple everything. You're obviously a paper clipper." This perked my interest. What did it mean that I was a paper clipper? After a brief closed-door session with myself, I decided that it meant:

1. I am simply more laissez-faire, disorganized, and willing to swing in the wind than the uptight zombies who insist on stapling everything.

2. I want to preserve the right to reorder, revise, and otherwise emend my work rather than commit myself to the hard and fastened.

3. I like to play with paper clips. They make good sculptures! 4. This was an observant young man who should be promoted, even though he is a stapler.

I also decided that I like the part of myself that's a paper clipper and should probably empower it. I wondered in what other ways I might be displaying these soft aspects of my personality while others were pursuing the hard side. I realized, after several beers and a Campari I ordered after once again giving up drinking, that I had a perfectly good premise for a business book here. Since I'm kind of busy this week, however, I think I'll tell you about it instead.

We all make unconscious choices that determine whether we will inhabit the cold, hard terrain of the business badlands or ramble in softer, less rigorous pastures where the skies are not cloudy all day. So then: Which side are you on?

E-mail or phone? E-mail people hate to talk to you face to face. They believe in getting business done with a minimum of insincere bullshit. Phone people live for it. They feast on it. Personally, I can't get enough of it.

Palmtop or paper? Hard, cold business people these days often have a tiny digital friend that contains all their addresses, notes, appointments, recipes, ideas, lists, and other necessary information for the heartless, agenda-encrusted business executive on the go, go, go. With this palmtop computer often comes a minuscule stylus made for pixie hands that enables you to write on the screen and thus issue commands to the module. It even dials the phone for you. I've tried to use one, really I have, but I can't. Give me a shred of paper from the side of a recyclable Big Mac container, and I will move the earth. I might also need a pen.

Mont Blanc or Bic? Oh yeah. Hard, cold business dudes have big, fat pens that go a long way to replacing or, to be charitable, augmenting their natural equipment. I'm sorry to be so blunt. Have you seen these things? Tell me I'm wrong. Ever encountered a nabob who's just lost his $550 chubby? You don't want to know about it. The alternative is a utilitarian writing implement that is cheap, useful, and fungible. Just like me!

Books on tape or regular old books? Hard, cold business guys have no time to read unless they're on an exercise bicycle, when they take in important magazines with profiles of people like them. Sometimes they PowerWalk around with little fanny packs that carry instructive lessons from Tom Peters, Michael Porter, and John Grisham. Other people don't.

Pinstripe or solid? Okay, we all have one pinstripe for when we have to dress up like Mr. Roover. But did you know there are cold, hard business guys who, like, that's all they have? They also shave better than we do. Sometimes they sport red hankies that pop out of their breast jacket pockets.

Suspenders or belt? In an era when Steve Case of AOL walks around looking like a high school student, did you know there are people still wearing braces? Are you one of them? Good for you!

Right coast or left? I'm torn about this. But there's no question: I'm on the wrong coast. This one is all about duty and performance and value creation. Out there, people take meetings about projects and get wired into Webmasters and eat tiny portions piled high for effect and judge each other by the cars they drive. Whenever I go there, I have fun. They have weather. In fact, people actually mention the weather as a reason to live there. Also coffee. Seattle, for instance, seems to be a place to live because they have very good coffee. That's a nice value system, much better than living near a place filled with people who engineer bloody mergers for a living.

CNBC or MTV? Which do you watch in your office? Do you stay in touch with the market all day long, exclaiming even when stocks you do not own do something dramatic? Do you know who Ron Insana is? Are you a fan of Ron Insana? If so, 'nuff said.

Digital or analog? Me, I don't need to know exactly, precisely, what time it is. It's about a quarter to three. It's ten past. It's not 4:14:16, okay? And you know what? Every watch is a little wrong. So what's the point of all that digital exactitude if you're a 15th of a second off? And what about those guys whose digital watches show what time it is in several locations around the globe? Nimrods!

Hot black coffee or iced brewed decaf cappuccino with cinnamon stick? I know several power forwards who are never without a greasy, stained cardboard cup of high-test they keep topped up at all times, even as they walk about the floor eating people for breakfast. They are always on point and have eyes that whirl in their skulls like tops. I like them. But give me my cup of foam.

Cigar or gum? Gum chewers don't wake up with a badger in their mouths.

Bald or faux hair? Guys with aggressive skulls are in, but they scare me.

Fruit or bacon? Bacon! If you've generally chosen the second option, join my side, you phone-calling, paper-toting, Bic-wielding, book-worming, solid-suited, belted, left-coast MTV watcher with a Mickey Mouse watch and a cup of cappuccino in your fist. I luv ya, babe!

And if you're not, then hello there, you E-mailing, palmtop-programming, Mont Blanc-brandishing, PowerWalking, pinstriped and suspendered right-coast dweller with a jones for CNBC and hot black coffee, sporting one heck of a digital mother chronometer. How ya doin'?

Can I have a job?

By day, STANLEY BING is a real executive at a real FORTUNE 500 company he'd rather not name.