Consultants For Every Occasion

In this time of downsizing, corporations are sensitive to your fears. That's why they're now giving this to employees weeks prior to downsizing, to let them know that should they be among the ones to lose their jobs, it's their own fault that they feel bad.

This appears to be a pretty big push by this consultancy. Besides a close friend of mine, many others seem to have received this of late. It's designed to make the process psychologically easier, to the middle managers doing the firing, it would seem: "Well, I was supportive," Mr. Middle manager can say to himself. "I gave them a book about mice complaining someone has taken the cheese from their maze."

Yes, that is the metaphor the book(and cartoon, and audiotape, etc.) uses for workers: mice in a maze. Mice in a maze expected to have control over their own fate. So who are the research scientists in this metaphor, as mice don't naturally inhabit mazes? And who is the person somewhere laughing their ass off at having developed this final insult to worker dignity, and making some of them like it?

Pure evil, this. If you get this book, watch out.

Labels: politics

  ¶ September 16, 2003