In a galaxy far, far away, pharmaceutical sales representatives are being told to stay at home in case the telephone rings…
“This is your CEO Chris Vileboaster speaking. Hello and welcome to the Sanawful Avastmass Thanksgiving redundancy hotline. …..
Those of you who read the financial press or Internet news pages will have found out about the redundancy programme which we have just announced in our Sales and Marketing division. This is in line with our philosophy of increasing our market share in key therapeutic areas by firing the sales representatives who sell them. This is completely in accordance with standard industry practice, one that dynamic Chartered Accountants such I have adopted in preference to acknowledging our own ineptitude as the principal reason for our company’s underperformance.
In order to underline this remarkable management achievement, we’ve decided to celebrate another milestone achievement in Human Resources philosophy. This year marks the eleventh anniversary of one of the greatest literary achievements of the past 100 years, a revolutionary book that has set the management philosophy of forward-looking companies such as ourselves, and of many others around the world.
I am of course referring to that epic volume “Who Moved My Cheese” by that great intellect and not at all pompous or condescending management guru, Dr. Spencer Johnson
This best-selling book has been a role model to this company, not least because it has shows that being over-hyped, expensive and dangerous rubbish is no barrier to multi million dollar sales. Just like our product range, in fact.
Through the medium of a trite, intelligence-insulting children’s tale, it praises the brainless who never ask the big questions (such as “why are we stuck in a maze looking for fucking cheese?”) whilst simultaneously and condescendingly demonising any “little” employee who resents random, capricious and spiteful management. “Who Moved My Cheese” is rightly a best seller because it reassures modern management by telling them that all of the bad things about their decisions are just down to so much employee whining. It makes every adverse human outcome of every management decision we ever make the fault of those affected by them, no matter how gratuitously, balls-achingly stupid.
So shit happens, get over it. Indeed, that could be the title of the book. It could be the book, in fact, but at $20 dollars a throw, Dr. Johnson is clearly a man who knows where his cheese is and feels a need to spin things out to 97 pages of big type and wide margins, just to give the illusion of value for money. Just like our Executives in fact, whose thinking also hasn’t changed in the 11 years since Johnson cashed in with his demeaning fairy story for the mentally retarded.
Each of you will be receiving a copy of this book and will be expected to attend mandatory Cheese Appreciation sessions. This is just to make sure you know that all of the bad things which will happen to you when you lose your job are just down to you being a pathetic, stick-in the-mud, inflexible whiner.
And once we’ve fired all of the whiners, we can let the mice out of the mazes to do our selling for us. They’re much cheaper than experienced reps, and don’t ask awkward questions, such as “why are you firing me, rather than the underperforming managers responsible for the past ten years of gross mismanagement that has put our company in a death spiral?”
The answer to which, of course, is, “because you are Little People and We aren’t. And we want your Cheese as well, you loser...”
Employees from a company in the real world that is similarly blighted by a CEO who’s determined to prove that he’s not just a senior management reject tell me that this clapped-out, self-righteous parable of piffle is back in their workplace, courtesy of its middle management and HR…
Losing your job us one thing. Using a tired metaphor for justifying the capriciousness of it all is just adding insult to injury…
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