Motivational Speakers

This is a satirical piece I wrote back before I learned how to fake an injury to get out of those mind-numbing teambuilding seminars.  Uuugh.  Now I know better.  Now I just think about actually sitting through it, and the nausea moves through me until I'm actually too sick to attend.  Crisis averted!  May you enjoy reading this as much as I hated attending it.


Motivational Speakers

Hello, everyone.  Welcome to your Company-sponsored lecture on leadership, productivity, and self-improvement.  I know you're all being forced to attend this seminar, and most of you are rolling your eyes and glancing at your watches, just waiting for me to say we’re all going to have a super-fun time.  Well, we’re probably not.  I mean, this is the same brainwashing, behavior-modifying, pop-psychological, propaganda-based waste of time we’ve been regurgitating and feeding back to the public every three years since the Hitler’s Youth program.  

That’s right; the only things we change are our catch phrases; like “See it and Be it,” “If you Believe it, You can Achieve it,” “Be Your Own Cheerleader,” and “Have You Hugged your Rainbow Today?”  And yet, some of you here today will still walk away believing that today has forever changed your life for the better.  So let’s get started!

Now, let me first tell you what we’re all about.  We’ve been hired by your Company to steal away precious hours of your life under the pretense of elevating your self-esteem, managing your time more efficiently, and bettering your overall lives.  In truth, however, it’s just much cheaper for your employers to make a meaningless gesture in the form of this tedious seminar to boost profits and productivity than to give you all raises or offer some sort of incentive program.  As a bonus, we make your heartless, money-driven Corporate Machine look like they actually care about its fully-disposable employees.

The same goes for your schools, ladies and gentlemen.  Yes, I can fully guarantee that if your children aren’t already enrolled a class that hammers these mind-controlling precepts into their fragile, impressionable young minds, they soon will be.  There are classes out there in every elementary school, junior high school, high school, and college that are devoted exclusively to these time-wasting exercises, designed to shape the weak-minded, gullible masses into the performance-driven automatons every employer dreams of.

But we’re getting off topic.  Let’s talk about time management.  Now, when I say ‘time-management,’ am I referring to your recreation time, your time at home, away from the office?  Of course not.  How would that help your Company pay my ridiculously overpriced bill?  No, I’m talking about better managing your time here, in the cubicle that will slowly but surely drain from you all life and vitality, leaving you a cold, hollow shell praying daily for a swift and painless death that will not come.

I know most of you are saying, “How?  How can I better manage my time to benefit my Company?”  Well, let’s just think about it for a moment; do you really need to take a lunch break?  Couldn’t you better use that hour by eating at your desk and finishing that paperwork?  Of course you could.  Just don’t choke on that chicken bone.  All the resulting paperwork would really slow down your HR department.  And what’s that, folks?  That’s right:  It’s…bad for The Company!

Today I’ll teach you about the power to “Choose Your Own Attitude.”  What a revolutionary concept, you’re thinking.  And you’re right.  You can decide how to feel today, and every day.  Do you want to be happy?  Then just be happy!  It doesn’t matter that you rear-ended a police car while driving your underage daughter to the hospital after she miscarried her cousin’s unborn child.  Suppress those unhappy, counter-productive emotions; block out those gloomy thoughts until they’re somewhere you’ll never find them until you suffer a psychotic break.

Just put on a happy face, and the rest will fall into place.  Don’t bring your problems to work; nobody cares about them anyway, and it can only decrease your performance level and the effectiveness of your co-workers.  Remember, The Company is everything, folks.

But what about problems at work, you say?  Well, those are your problems, and they’re your fault.  You shouldn’t selfishly lower your colleagues’ productivity by making a big scene when you’re passed over for that promotion in favor of the intern who gave in to your supervisor’s bizarre sexual advances.  Don’t sue over unpaid overtime or complain about working weekends.  Is that good for the Company?  No.  It doesn’t benefit anybody, and frankly, it can only make it that much harder for you to turn that frown upside down.

We all know that The Company is a fine-tuned Machine, and it can only work best and most effectively produce revenues if all the little people—I mean little pieces—are working together as one unified, non-individual-based unit.  Only if you all work your tired fingers to the bone, ridding yourself of every drop of individuality and hope for a better future, can the Company maximize its output.  That means higher profit margins and more money than a printing press.

But not for you, disposable employees.  No, no; that’s what I’m here for.  A meaningless gesture from your superiors to give you that false sense of loyalty and respect you so desperately thirst for, in order to keep you operating at the back-breaking pace they need to improve those bottom lines.  Yes, folks; if you listen and apply everything you hear today to your lives as a whole, I guarantee your Company will hire us to do this at every office they own.  Soon every employee will be volunteering to work weekends, giving up overtime pay, forfeiting vacations and time with friends and family, and feeling great about it!

Over the next four days, you’ll learn all about:

·         How guilt at missing unreachable quotas can be offset by working off the clock
·         Visualizing how the same repetitive, meaningless tasks performed over and over again will somehow make you president of The Company

·         The smug futility of mission statements

·         How to forge a false sense of unity through Company-based sports teams, retreats, and other mindless ‘teambuilding’ exercises

·         The degradation of the points-based ‘reward’ system

·         How competing in non-monetary awards programs for attendance/safety certificates can make you feel ‘special’

·         Better customer service though personal humiliation

And so much more!