Tuesday, April 12, 2011

If you want to brainwash me at work...

Then give me some good drugs or a free fitness membership at Lifetime Fitness, because you won't get me to do Corporate Drumming, willingly.  I am a DBA.  I am impervious to emotional appeals and Pavlovian conditioning.

If you haven't ever heard of Corporate Drumming, I'd consider yourself lucky.  It's one of those team-building exercises that starts with a "Leader" that is usually a musician who has so much energy that he must have been mainlining coffee and nicotine in the company basement for a few days.  This is not your typical, small-on-talk, just-provides-the-beat combo drummer.  This is a hired brainwasher that is there morph you into a conglomerate amorphous mass of sound, drowning out the sound of our own heartbeat.  Remember this...there will be a speech to follow.

Don't let my condescending remarks about the drummer fool you.  These are usually pretty good musicians and make a good display of talent to get you cheering and clapping for their performance.  Honestly, good drum combos are rare, and these guys are usually really good.  Once they get you clapping it's like the old salesman's trick of asking you a question you'll say, "Yes," to. Then they try to get you clapping in sync.  If you get to this point, you're past the point of turning away and leaving the brainwashing session.

Don't use the "I forgot my drum" excuse, because you'll notice they've already provided them for you.  I have been a musician for years, and I've never been provided with a free instrument.  This immediately made me suspicious to walk into a room of free drums.  Once again, it's the old salesman's trick of placing something shiny in front of you that you will touch, so he can lay his line on you.  And if you're worried about sounding bad, they've already thought of that for you.  The audio will be jacked up so loud, that you can't really hear yourself think, much less drum.

Then once they have you worked up into a frenzy, drumming the crap out of yourself...they lay the company line on you that they want to you to tow.  I must admit it's a new implementation of the "Bandwagon" tactic of advertising.  A company must fulfill its objectives and are responsible for empowering their employees to do so.  They want to make money and we want to have jobs.

So what's my beef?  They are using MUSIC to mimic the dynamics of orchestrating a business environment.  If this is so true, then why aren't musicians some of the richest 1% of our society like our business owners in the USA?  It's a fallacy of false cause.  Just because your employees are drumming doesn't mean you have control of your business environment.  And just because you have control over your business environment, doesn't mean you have a group of undiscovered drummer savants in the wings of your accounting department.

Music is special to me.  It's also a form of self expression.  Being forced to participate in crap like this makes me feel like I did when they let all the kids finger-paint blobs and call it art in kindergarten after my artist grandma taught me to watercolor trees and flowers.  Corporate America - you were doing much better with trying to get your employees to work out and eat better.  You might want to go back to that for better results.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Pregnant Ladies are not Disabled

Crippled people are disabled.  My father had Muscular Dystrophy.  That's a chronic, debilitating disease that caused him pain every step he took his whole life.  That's why the disabled get to park at the front of businesses.

For some reason, this office has decided that pregnant girls have a problem getting into the building.  Funny, I don't see someone come out to the car and place them in a wheelchair like they do for the lady in tech support who is a paraplegic.

The last time I had to take a parking spot on the back row, I walked in with a mouth full of dirt, covered in grass that blew into my face from the corn field next to us.  I was pissed to see two empty expectant mother spaces right up front.  In fact, these spaces have been empty every day for the past 2 months.  If this company can't get enough parking spaces for the regular folk, then I vote those extra 2 "expectant mother" spots can go.  Last time I checked, we get to work from home and the company will pay your Internet bill.