How To Make People Mad While Trying To Save The World

Warriors, there are times in your career when you’ll asked to be on something called a “strike team.” Sometimes these are called SWAT teams or action teams or “that thing I’m obligated to send someone too, but which I don’t give a shit about, so I’ll send that guy.”

These teams are temporary gatherings of people from around the company brought together to solve a problem or improve a process and, as always, to make PowerPoints. I’m coming to suspect that that is indeed the purpose of all corporate existence, to produce PowerPoint presentations.

The particular strike team I’m on is made up of wonderful people with smart ideas and if the company would listen, it would hear answers.

But it is deaf. Any noise that might cause a change is ignored. Any suggestion that might cause a shift in thinking is politely declined. A whispered hint that we might need an alteration to the way things are done is greeted with gritted teeth and a, "Go fuck yourself.”

But here I am anyway, on the team tasked with making noises, suggestions, and whispers about change.

What to do when you are being paid to flog a dead horse?

Crack that whip. Crack it good.

We Are Not Mining Coal – Example #1

Warriors, even as we sometimes vent the steam from our spleens, when we struggle against the soul-rending frustration of corporate life, when we piss and moan and weep and gnash teeth about our lost years wasted in Cubeland, it is essential that we occasionally step back and acknowledge the we indeed are not mining coal. We are not picking lettuce. We are not digging ditches. We are not Hoovering port-a-potties or swimming through sewers prying loose blockages.

We are of the White Collar tribe. We go home as clean as when we left.

And sometimes, this life can bring moments of sublime pleasure.

One example is this…The Expense Account Dinner, a meal in a nice restaurant that costs about five times what you’d normally pay for a dinner out of your own pocket. Thank you Expense Account Gods, we appreciate the premium steak, the top notch Indian food, the Sushi that was still swimming about five minutes ago.

Even better, give thanks for the dinners spent with extravagant senior executives who like to live well, who are rich and like to eat even richer when the company is picking up the tab. I had no idea what a hundred-dollar bottle of wine tasted like until my first senior executive dinner.

True, I didn’t taste every dollar of that one hundred. But that didn’t stop me from saying, “Ooo, that really is good.”

Thank you, Expense Account Gods, for the bounty you’ve put before us on white table clothes, eaten with real silver, and served by attractive waitress who are also part time models.

CEO Presentation Day

A momentous day. The big CEO presentation day, the showdown, the Thrilla in PowerPoint, the Demo for The Ages, the time to fish or cut bait, shit or get off the pot, get him to sign on the line which is dotted, close the motherfucking deal, make the bastard believe, make him buy what you are selling, make him buy you, who you are, why you are, why you are valuable to the company, to humanity, to him personally. Make him know why you should continue to take up cube space, a parking space, have lunch at the subsidized employee café, breathe company air, why your name shouldn’t be on the next layoff list.

Look at my shit. Buy my shit. You cocksucker. I’m going to make you money. I’m going to help you keep your job, your ugly yellow Lamborghini, your trophy wife who seems as dumb as bag of hammers. You putz. You empty suit. You waste of a good head of hair. Go fuck yourself.

And support my product. Give me lots of money to make it. And a big marketing budget would be nice.

Thank you.

Decoding The Corporate Codes -- I hear you, now shut up, that's why

Warriors, are you hearing me? Because I hear you. I do. If you speak to me, your voice will travel through the air, vibrate the machinery of my inner ear, and I will nod understandingly, as if I might care about your words.
Want to know if I really care?

If I say, "I hear you," I don't really give a shit. I've said those three words to let you know you can stop talking now, that nothing you can possibly say next will in any way affect my opinion or my plans or my capacity to care.

If you hear those words -- "I hear you" -- just take it for granted that the person who said them is no longer listening.

Do you hear me?

Are you seeing Recession Insanity?

Has your company gone crazy? Has the recession driven everyone in Cubeland mad?

Has a plummeting stock price caused your CEO to suddenly want to sit in on every meeting, everywhere in the company, all at once? Is he now suddenly an expert in packaging, modeling, electronics, programming, coffee brewing and toilet repair? Is there nothing he doesn’t have an opinion on? Is he acting like a man about to be fired? Can you see the beads of cold sweat on his forehead?

Are you or co-workers flying 5 to 15 hours only to sit in on a 20 minute meetings in territories you didn’t even know your company did business in? Do you find yourself flying and flying to meeting after meeting, showing products, showing marketing plans, showing the bags under your eyes from weeks of jet lag?

Is your company inventing new processes and inventing processes to make new processes, with the hopes that there is a magical way to get all the work done that used to be done by a team that was 10% to 40% larger, you know, before the layoffs, back in the days of milk and honey, when your stock options and mortgage were not underwater?

Let me know. What’s going on at your company? What symptoms of Recession Insanity are you seeing?

I’d like to know that I’m not alone. Thanks!