There are a few; unique observations that working for a large company can offer you.
Listening to a speech from a company "officer": As a comedian, I find the opportunity to witness a speech from a CEO or a CIO or a COO or a CMO or a CFO of a major corporation almost as hilarious as a waterskiing squirrel. It is truly incredible to watch these people, fill out an hour or two meeting with such an elegant level of meaningless, useless, pointless blathering that it has got to be considered an art form. These people went to Ivy League schools and got their PHD in Bullshit. They are first ballot hall of famers in phrases like, "Going Forward", "Moving Forward", "As we ...", "We're projecting too...", "We'll just have to eat that elephant one bite at a time". They often have slides or a PowerPoint Presentation that could only make sense to the slaves that created it for them while they were trying to work off of the incredibly vague, incoherent idea that was handed down to them by "the officer".
Witnessing the people around you at a speech by a company officer: If you are lucky enough to take a look around at your co-workers during a speech by one of the companies officers at a major corporation, take notes, because it is a unique and hilarious time within the human psyche of a crowd of people. At one point, our companies CEO said, and I quote.... "Boy I sure hope that we left enough time for questions", in somewhat of a sarcastic tone. Without hesitation, the conference center erupted into laughter as though it was the funniest thing that any of these people had ever heard in their entire lives. You could even see people, trying to "out laugh" the people next to them in some sort of feeble attempt to attract attention from the CEO from within a crowd of hundreds of other idiots. People, in these situations actually think to themselves, maybe that guy up there, will see me laughing harder than anyone else and he will think, "boy that guy really gets my humor" and promote me! This can also be witnessed by people sitting close to the stage and taking notes like we are in 5th grade and the garbage that falls out of that guys mouth needs to be documented. You also have the people who will nod their head as though personally accepting whatever in the hell that dude is talking about. There is always the guy or two or three who will come up with some sort of question at the end to ask "the officer". It's the same few people every time, desperately trying to make themselves look interested in their bosses eyes by asking, what are usually really dumb questions in front of the entire company. It is incredible how such a massive group of people can sit together for an hour, listening to some guy talk about nothing and act absolutely thrilled to be there.
Listening to people have day to day conversations at work in a major corporation: The day to day conversations that people have with each other, while at work in one of these places can barely even be considered a form of human communication. They are packed with questions about one another’s families and the weather and the traffic. It is like small talk on steroids. It is a delicate ballet of multiple people, trying as hard as they can to carry on a conversation while making a constant conscience effort to not say anything that could possibly offend anyone else. Lines like. “Yeah, like he is ever on time”, or “Can you make the clock go faster?” or “Are you hard at work or hardly working?”, actually pass as jokes in these places. And for some reason, people do laugh when they hear them. These conversations are nothing more than some people, saying a bunch of words, while looking at someone else’s face.
Watching how excited people personally get over whatever kind of garbage the corporation announces: People will nearly piss their pants over the excitement they feel when something new that their company is doing is announced. It doesn’t matter what that something is or what it does. Inside of their heads, they completely skip the evaluation and acceptance steps and go right to the being absolutely thrilled about it step. If it has their companies stamp on it, no matter how ridiculous the world will think it is, they think it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I have a hard time determining if this behavior is just a lot of people acting, or if there are actually that many borderline brain-damaged people that have actually stopped deciding for themselves whether or not they think something is good or bad.
Old people at major corporations: From my experience, the old people are the ones that are closest to a voice of reason that you can get. They are too old to dilute themselves anymore like the young people do and will generally be willing to call Bullshit when appropriate. It is unfortunate that many of them walk a fine line with this behavior so as to not risk their eventual retirement money. More of them could really do a lot of good amongst the masses of fake, kiss-ass, young people.
Watching the progressive soiling of an otherwise motivated employee: Over a long enough timeline, if you work in the same place you can all witness this phenomenon. A young, just out of college kid will be hired. Generally, over his/her first six months, they will reply to every email, never be late for a meeting, display the appropriate amount of fake enthusiasm towards their work. Then, around the one year mark, the weight of the collective delusion will begin to grip them. Suddenly they don't smile as much. It will take a day or two to get an email back from them, they get a little snippier with you when you ask them a question. Eventually, after an unknown amount of time, they will devolve into the typical, fake, credit stealing, political game playing animal that most major companies are chalked full of.
Meetings: in my opinion, major corporations are full of two kinds of people, people who are good at doing the work and people who are good at talking about the work in meetings. It is rare to have someone who is good at both. Unfortunately, our society loves the talker; so the people who are good at talking about doing work, but can't actually do it are the ones who are heralded as the best employees while the folks that actually do all the work just accumulate more work until their heads eventually explode. Eventually, groups within the corporation will become so full of people who don't know how to do any work that they will just keep having meetings about the work and the work never gets done by anybody. These sort of stalemates are usually fixed by hiring consultants to do the real work. It is a vicious, expensive cycle.
Watching everyone leave, exactly at 5 o’clock: There is something so refreshingly ironic about watching hundreds of people, all of whom have just sat in a building for 8 hours acting like they loved every minute of it, agreed with everything that their manager said all day, pretended to love everyone around them, all file out of a building as soon as the clock strikes 5, as though the place is on fire. It reminds you that the real world is still out there and life at a major corporation does not operate within the realm of reality and that everyone that works there is acting and whoever honestly believes that they aren't is delusional.
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