Creativity
Corporate Horrors
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been fascinated by an idea that sort of tumbled into my head fully-formed. For those of you who are creative types, you understand that this is something about as rare as catching a unicorn with your bare hands and convincing it to make you a sandwich afterwards.
OK, to say that the ideas has fascinated me is putting it a bit lightly. It’s more accurate to say that it has consumed me almost completely. In fact, when the idea hit me, it was so put together that I swore I must have been Incepted. Fortunately, I haven’t spotted Leo or fake Ra’s al Ghul hanging around me.
While I’m not ready to go into it just yet, I will say that it’s a story that blends absurd fantasy with the most mundane setting on the planet — the corporate office. I’m in the process of trying out a new means of outlining and pre-writing this novel at the moment, but I thought I’d take a little survey to give me some guidance.
For those of you that have experience in the corporate world, could you share some of the biggest cliches or headaches that you deal with? I’ve already got most of the corporate tropes that I’m building the story around, but I wanted to see if the things I’m focusing on are the same ones that other people actually deal with. These cliches can be anything from annoying buzzwords used by soothsayer vice presidents to the types of co-workers that you generally deal with in a given department (Steals Everyone’s Lunch Guy comes to mind).
So, what say you guys? Feel free to share.
Discussion
7 comments for “Corporate Horrors”
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The worst of the corporate horrors is earning revenue does not equal R&D or internal investment. For example:
We’re attending the annual corporate meeting, and the CEO has pulled together a Powerpoint presentation showing off just how well the company is performing. Sales has jumped 30% over projection, so revenue is climbing.
While he goes on and on about how much money corporate is raking in, Client Services and Product Development are eyeing one another warily. Both of our departments are stretched to the limit (and beyond). We’ve been denied new hires two years in a row now by the same CEO who is telling us now how wealthy everyone at the top is becoming.
We have no money for R&D, no money to support our rapidly growing clientele, and are somehow expected to keep up.
If we’re making so much god damned money, why can’t we seem to support ourselves?
Oh, I know why. Because no one cares about infrastructure anymore.
Never worked in the corporate world, but it seems like this is a perfect excuse to watch Office Space. There are tons of cliches that you could use from there.
We’ve had to fill out a form explaining how we can walk between buildings without getting hurt, and been warned via center-wide email that sidewalks are slippery when it’s raining. Also have almost a dozen different passwords for all our systems, and constant reminders – “your password is expiring in 1 month – do you want to change it now?” I’ve also heard the phrase “in beautiful powerpoint” used unironically.
There’s the guy whose lunch always smells terrible, the guy who always wears the same clothes every day, the coupon lady, the guy who hits reply-all to company-wide emails, people who spend all day on the phone with their spouse, the constant texter, and the guy who snores during meetings.
“We are a relationship-based company,” “people are our greatest asset”
I thought Steals Everyone’s Lunch Guy was pure fiction, until I started at my current workplace. Turns out, he really does exist, and our version gets himself into some pretty ugly near-brawl situations.
My current workplace bane is the Manager of Contrary Agreements. Regardless of how directly your response contradicts his statement, his reply is always the same: “Exactly!” He will usually leave it at that and walk away, for maximum bewilderment effect.
One time someone wasn’t careful how he abbreviated “assembly” – the meeting agenda listed “Ass. Analysis.”
I can’t wait to see what comes from this. My corporate horror stories just mainly involve managers, etc who can’t seem to tone down the condescension and have a real conversation that helps move something forward. Maybe that’s why meetings suck.
I work in an office setting, answering phones at a desk. My biggest thing would have to be the struggle not to fall asleep sometimes. That’s it, I’m afraid. Office settings have a way of injecting you with Melatonin. Maybe you could work that in somehow ;) I love the idea though. A corporate fantasy tale…straight out of left field!