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Emails from the Land of Broken Toys Deux

I know you're tired of tinny Aeschylus translations, so here he is in his inimitable voice, discussing a layoff of employees who worked on a small island off the coast of Greece that "while successful", did not fit in with the global strategy of his age. Some words I translated and bolded them for the hoi polloi (ironically Greek!) among us. "Iô ouk oid' hopôs humin apistęsai me chrę, saphei de muthôi pan hoper proschręizete peusesthe: kaitoi kai legous' stovepipe theossuton cheimôna kai diaphthoran morphęs, hothen customer-focus schetliai proseptato. aiei gar opseis ennuchoi pôleumenai es parthenônas tous emous paręgoroun leioisi muthois "ô meg' eudaimon korę, ti partheneuei daron, exon soi gamou tuchein megistou; Zeus gar himerou belei pros value our employees tethalptai kai sunairesthai Kuprin thelei: su d', ô pai, mę 'polaktisęis lechos to Zęnos, all' exelthe pros Lernęs bathun leimôna, but they're out on their ass boustaseis te pros patros, hôs an to Dion omma lôphęsęi pothou." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What if great writers in history were infected with corporate-speak? Buzzword bingo in the classics: Thoreau: When first I took up my abode in the cube forest, that is, began to spend my nights as well as days there, which, ironically, was on Independence Day, or the Fourth of July, my cube was not finished for winter, but was merely a defence against the ponc, without plastering or chimney, the walls being of rough, cheap polyester on aluminum, decorated with various & sundry Baywatch pictures. The upright white hewn computer and sausage-casing colored floor gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the morning, when the chair and desktop was saturated with spilled coffee, so that I fancied that by noon some sweet donuts would exude from them. Long live the horse! I'll see your Aeschylus and raise you... Homer, with corp speak: The rosy fingers of dawn did appear beyond the horizon, as the Sirens, thinking out of the box, gave Odysseus some real "opportunities" when trying to ramp up his synergy after his descent into the maelstrom... Lewis Carroll, ditto: 'Twas brillig, and the stuffy suits did gyre and gimbol in the wabe all drilled down were the stovey pipes as the mome raths outgrabe... James Whitcomb Riley: When the frost is on the punkin and yer rampin' up yer synergy an' the stovepipe refrences has drained you of all energy, 'Bout the time you hear tell of a new verb what's called "lev'rage", Then's the time to slam a jug o' some white lightnin' beverage. Dashiel Hammet: "The jig is up, dollface. We found the joker who pumped your old man full a' hot lead, and it looks like you were the only one in the solarium during the timebox of his death" "Well, with our new paperless environment you got nothin' to pin on me" "I've curtailed your scope creep through iterative processing, sugar, and by matrixing with the state cops we got all exit routes surrounded" "Does this mean I'll be deployed via a fast-track methodology to the state pen?" "You know I can't crystal ball what the judge will say when you're transitioning from citizen to criminal to inmate, sweetcakes. I hope for your sake he leverages some time off for good behavior." Anonymous: On the first day God put a hard stake in the ground and said, "Let us take a buy vs. build strategy, with an out of the box, vanilla implementation, and after we get our arms around it we will drill down from the 50,000 foot view to where the rubber meets the road." And then there were "some opportunities". Aeschylus, spiked with some corp-speak: The waxen pipe drones forth in accompaniment a clear-sounding slumberous strain. Alas, alas! Where is my far-roaming wandering stovepipe taking me? In what, O son of Cronus,in what have you found offence so that you have bound me to this yoke of misery--aah! are you harassing a wretched programmer to frenzy by this terror of the pursuing y2k? Consume me with fire, hide me in the dialog box, or give me to the monsters of the deep to devour, where their are no org charts but do not grudge, the favor that I ask. Do you hear the voice of the horned virgin? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Shoe's Rant: "I just received and perused the August issue of "Faces" (the latest silly name for our calculated corporate-speak communication medium). The cover story this month is the new advertising campaign about to begin in less than a fortnight (coming to thousands of television commercials near you). I was previously disappointed when I heard we decided to spend millions to formally change our corporate name from Nationwide Insurance Enterprise to just Nationwide ... while at the same time we're trying to break into foreign markets (if we're changing our name anyway, why not call ourselves "Worldwide")? I was further dismayed/embarrassed by our choice of logos ... a frame/box ... which brings mental associations of "we've been framed" and "thinking INSIDE the box". But I was simply aghast to read that our fancy new advertising gimmick (which I'm sure we also paid millions for) is going to be the "picture-this technique", officially described as "bringing a person's thumbs together with index fingers". From my own experience (and that of most baby-boomers - whom I believe are indeed our target audience), doing that with your hands always meant one of two things: 1) You're telling someone they're square. 2) You're telling someone they're a loser (i.e. the "L" shape of each hand times two). Neither of these are positive images. So, in summary, we're spending millions of dollars to make mass changes and convince the public that we're a bunch of square losers working for a company that refuses to think outside the box and is constantly being sued (albeit we always claim that we were framed). Nice image. Good idea. Can't wait to see that commercial when I watch the Browns/Steelers game (I'll just be sure not to wear my Nationwide badge around any friends that will surely be looking for such an easy target for abuse)." ----------------------------------------------------- Hew buoys, check this out, the new Brand Builders program: "This group will be made up of high potentials in paybands D-F". Goodie, another buzzword to add to my collection. I see the bigwigs are now calling some of us 'high potentials'. Tee hee, like horses I guess. "Strategic Communication is sponsoring Brand Builders and will provide ongoing training and resources, such as Brand Builder's intranet site with chat rooms, an activities kit and monthly tip sheets....". Yeah, that'll be one hoppin' chat room, yes siree bob. The brand builders chat room (BBCR, 'barf builders chat room'), a 'high potential' rival to the DLCR. By the way, didn't you know good ol' Mr. Strategic Communication was involved in this cr*p? "This responsibility will allow these high potentials to develop the core competencies of communication, customer focus, personal learning, informing and problem solving. Brand Builders will have further developmental opportunity through interaction with the Brand Coach who will serve as their mentor and partner with them to make the new way of doing business a reality." - WHAT THE H*LL? "Upon completion of your branding experience, a representative from the South Texas Cattle Association will be on hand to actually brand our logo on your @ss." ------------------------------------- This raises so many questions. Will they get uniforms? Will the coach get to pat the Brand Builders on the butt? Will the coach want to pat the Brand Builders on the butt? The term "core competency" sounds so demeaning. Sounds like they need to be brought up to a "C" level in reading and math facts. Will they ever get to pursue "core excellence"? If I were Heather or Jim I would sure be asking what Brand-related activities these whacko's have in mind. Will they have to lead finger and thumb exercises every morning ? Will they have to march around the office with large blue frames made out of foam on their heads? In keeping with the "picture this" theme, will Jim and Heather have to perform whatever bizarre act involving whipped cream, dog collars and a trapeze that the coach comes up with? "And now Brand builders picture this" The problem solving will involve such things as "which side of the blue frame goes up?" and "how many blue sticks does it take to make a blue frame?". Is becoming a Brand Builder the next step up the corporate ladder after you have been an operation feed captain for a few years? Will Brand Builders be issued weapons and be authorized to termina Subject: Branding Update Well we have our victims, I mean representatives. Phil Gath's note below explains their role in a way every bit as vague as our Maximum Leader (Gaspar). In fact, Gath simply copied the language of Gaspar's note, which seems to give credence that Gath is as clueless on the positions as Gaspar. Odds are that the Brand Builders are exalted butt buddies to the Branding Coach. "The Actuarial Department will have 2 representatives to be in the Brand Builders. They are Heather Gordon and Jim Alford. What is the Brand Builder’s Role? – They will spend time facilitating brand-related activities in team meetings and in the day-to-day work environment. This responsibility will allow Heather and Jim to develop the core competencies of communication, customer focus, personal learning, informing and problem solving. Brand Builders will have further developmental opportunity through interaction with a Brand Coach who will serve as their mentor and partner with them to make the new way of doing business a reality." ------------------------------------- "McSorley's Saloon" is a New York bar still around & dating from 1850. Check out this 1913 Harper's Weekly article on the saloon: "..It is the type of saloon that is passing away, but is represented by isolated examples, here, which still persist. No woman has ever passed or passes the threshold of McSorley's. The dignified workingmen who sit quietly for hours over one or two mugs of ale look as if they never thought of a woman. They are maturely reflecting in a purely male ways and solemnly discoursing, untroubled by skirts or domesticity. The spirit of McSorely's is to welcome the drinker of a mug or two during long hours and discourage the 'flush' party who spend much but seldom and drive away the quiet, constant ones. If there were more saloons like McSorely's in the country, and few of the other kind, there would probably now be no strong temperance movement, attacking the price of grape or the corn - that element of civilization recognized from Plato to Omar as emphasized by Fitzgerald and accepted as a stimulating spark kindling our poetry, our literature, our temperamental sociability, inciting our fancy, and warming the world in which we live. It is there where men talk over, think, and exchange feelings and ideas relating to their labor and lives. The social philosphers take their fragmentary thoughts and construct them as programmes and systems." gee I thought we were just bitching about our jobs and coworkers. ------------------------------------- Just got this note from (say like James Bond) Communication, Strategic Communication and thought I'd forward it because it says not to. Is this the only internet rumor? No, hog breath, a false rumor on the internet is like a tick on a hounddog: A false rumor is being circulated on Internet e-mail. The message claims that a "Congressman BiteMe" has introduced "Bill 6969P" to allow the federal government to impose a 5-cent surcharge on each duplicative joke sent over the Internet. The first time a joke comes through it's free, but fees escalatate on the 2nd thru 20th time received. This is apparently aimed to discourage the recycling of internet jokes. No such proposal exists. Surprisingly, there is no "Congressman BiteMe" serving in the House. If you receive this e-mail, please dilute it without forwarding. From: Strategic Communication on 08/26/99 02:33 PM To: Nationwide employees cc: Subject: False rumor on e-mail A false rumor is being circulated on Internet e-mail. The message claims that a "Congressman Schnell" has introduced "Bill 602P" to allow the federal government to impose a 5-cent surcharge on each e-mail message delivered over the Internet. The money would be collected by Internet Service Providers and then turned over to the U.S. Postal Service. No such proposal exists. In fact, there is no "Congressman Schnell" serving in the House. If you receive this e-mail, please delete it without forwarding. -------------------------------------- As I stare down the barrel of the last single weekend of a needlessly prolonged adolescence, I am reminded of the wisdom of 'shot-gun' weddings, for a gun to your head purifies the decision-making process remarkably. For now, alas, I must say goodbye to my all-day whiskey baccanals, my subscription to "Turkish Bath Nymphettes" (thoughtfully, illustrated), my part-time business of rolling cigars, my laid-back approach to home ownership with the motto, 'if it's not falling down, don't fix it", my obsession with 19th century Britain (for history is the last refuge of the powerless - taking smug satisfaction in knowing how everything's going to turn out, second-guessing everybody and knowing the theory of relativity and who one the Kentucky Derby in '92 while that retard Einstein didn't). And so I give up the ghost on an adolescence that began in 1972, at a strip-poker party attended by huddled masses of girls in scarves and double double-knit sweaters and their brother's tube socks wedged inside their bras. They would hunker down in a bunker-mentality, determined not to show anything, and when they got to their blouse they would have to go to the bathroom & not return.... -----------------------------Got a chuckle that that paean of corp buzzspeak, the ubiquitious 'facilitate', earned its own quotes (like Mini-me in Austin Powers II). Page 5 in Agents article says, "agents do not administer the test but 'facilitate' it....". I like the fact that even the Nationwider, surely no friend to the anti-buzzword crowd, would implicitly recognize the flabbiness and all-encompassing nature of 'facilitate', which is most often used as a default for any specific action, for if you actually did any work you would use that particular verb, but if you stood around and watched something happen you can safely and profitably refer to your action as facilitating.--------------"The weekend, we hardly knew ye". I've run out of weekend. Greedily consumed and profligatly thrown away, the weekend now is on a death-watch, a dead-man walking, here at 10:30 pm on Sunday night. I look askance at the killer speed of it's depature, it requires no coup de grace to effect it's demise. I stare soddenly at the warm milk in my glass and wish I could be sick tomorrow. I longingly remember full glasses of those comfort medicines, brimming Pepto-Bysmal, malted Milk of Magnesia, candied Smith Brothers lozenges, Vick's Vaporub?.Comfort meds. Sickness is surely one of the overlooked pleasures of childhood. I remember one time two days spent reading about Kenya and the animals in the African savannah....when else do you have such time to waste as you do when you're young and sick? All I ever will know about the African savannah I know because of a head cold - not that it matters much, but that's the point. Sickness means never having to do things for utilitarian reasons. But the Sunday denounement nears, I rest my eyes on Foote's Civil War, Volume Three, "Red River to Appomattox" and I fear the weekend is at it's Appomattox. But it was a good weekend; I spent is as unwisely as I could manage....------------------------------Nationwide Insurance employee Strategic Communications was with the company for a dismal, soul-deflating, ambition-stripping lifetime when he stumbled on the idea of killing mail server performance by delivering useless resource-hogging timewasting parables about various peoples' trivial efforts to conform with the company's latest stupid high-profile acronym-laden initiative, to be forwarded to every single e-mail customer in the entire company. Further drains on resources are accomplished by urging the more Luddite-laden areas of the company to distribute the useless information via paper, thereby encouraging clear cutting of old growth forests to provide enough paper. Strategic's additional job responsibilities include puncturing lethargic employees' eardrums by blasting cacophonic messages over the p.a. system with vital information regarding beanie baby auctions. Strategic is truly making a difference by reflecting ease of abuse. ----------------------It is with no joy I whip this horse but enough whipping hasn't ensued. At first blush, some comments: Doesn't "Megan Lavely" sound like the moniker of a 'adult actress'? the slogan "interfaces - making a difference by reflecting ease of use" is all wrong. 'Wide slogans must use a form of the word "team", must have symmetry, and must be meaningless (example: Teamwork means working teams!"). This concoction about reflecting ease of use sounds like some kind of ergometric study on mirrors. just say no to random colorization! you can tell no one is very proud of this schtick since there is no name attached - it is from "Strategic Communication" and if you want to contact the purveyor of this borscht you need to email "Feedback" or snail mail "interfaces". Never a good sign when no one wants to put their name on it. Nothing useful or strategic ever came from a note bearing the letterhead "Strategic Communication". -------------------Strategic was born a coalminer's son in godforsaken Pike county in southeast Ohio. His vision was tunnel, his daily food coal dust, his drinking water laced with uranium that leaked like a sieve from the nearby nuclear power plant. He grew a third eye as a result, and was resigned to a life of the circus as a side-show act until he challenged the big employer to the north on the grounds of diversity (i.e. three eyes are better than two). Nationwide hates the smell of lawsuit in the morning, so they hired him as a 'vision consultant' but in practice he just sends out mind-numbing communications. --------------------The more Mark thought about it, not getting the security officer's name was very low on his list of regrets. After correcting his boneheaded coworker's fax snafu, he had xeroxed his ass and faxed a copy to the Insurance Commisioner with the scrawled inscription "Here's looking at you. Love, Dimon." Well, that career was down the toilet anyway. He arrived home to his dumpy little paint-peeling cape cod with 20 years left on the mortgage; the scruffy yard overrun with crabgrass, broken yard toys, and a noisy little flock of sniveling crumbcrushers, and surveyed his realm. King of this domain: this was the sum total of his life so far, and he became sullen and dead inside. His wife, a spent piece of used jet trash who made good bloody marys and kept her mouth shut most of the time, would meet him at the door and grouse about the latest mindnumbing household emergency or overdue bill. His car, now worth only a fraction of the balance on his lease, emitted fumes that gave him a low-grade headache and nausea as he tried to maintain his gladhanding salesguy facade on cold sales calls, trying to sell misleading and underperforming financial products to people who didn't want or need them, trying not to falter in a highwire balancing act that required him to meet monthly sales quotas while avoiding behaviors that triggered $100 million class-action lawsuits against his employer. The one lone bright spot in Mark's dismal, soul crushing existence was his receptionist, with whom he would retire to a hotel room or the back of her minivan three or four lunch hours a week and rip off a quickie, but even she was trying to hold him to the drunken and lusty promises he had muttered to her one night, and her ardor had cooled to the point that she wouldn't even wear that one gauzy blouse he'd bought her at Target using the last of his commission check. No, one of Mark's main regrets was not leaving work in time to stop by Uncle Sam's pawn shop before closing so he could buy that pearlhandled chrome plate 9-mm Ruger in time for his upcoming trip to home office...---------- Mark ashed out a clove cigarette on his left pant-leg and gave a little yelp of pain when he discovered he'd chosen an extant hole in his pants. He was half-drunk after his secretary, whom he called his "little Margarite", left him in the throes, still tumescent. His promises had finally expired like curdled milk. But still he had reason to be hopeful; word had come from on high that he was going to be recognized bigtime for the time he followed up on an errant fax. He returned to the office and to his co-workers back-slapped him and gave him a couple bronx cheers. They said he had a surprise in his email. He checked his screen and he got some damn fool thing called "interfaces" which is what he thought he was going to have with his lil' Margarite. Boy, they loved those dual-purpose words don't they, he thought. Bi-sexual words that went both ways - could act as nouns or verbs - really got the big guys off. Must be some kind of subliminal appreciation that the word could do two jobs and thus cut out the salary of some poor schmuck single-usage word. He read the glowing account of his triumph, and looked in vain for some kind of financial reward. The lament went, "I saved some ass fax and all I got is a lousy thank you note." Yeah that'll pay that mortgage, you betcha. The crab grass'll have to stay...... But lest we leave Mark in this pitiful position, just 3 weeks later....: Mark is burying his beer huggie in the sand. He'd quit work and flew to an isle near the Tropic of Cancer and was looking for that lost shaker of salt. He called it a sabbatical, funny, work called it an involuntary retirement. Still he had not a care in the world, the dollar went far here (although the islanders were mostly still on the barter system). As a kid fascinated by maps, Mark lusted to touch the hemline of the Tropic of Cancer, figuring it was at wide black rubber line in the water with a series of buoys attached, like the kind that you find confining the swimming area of a lake.....but that's another story. ---------------