Karma Police

From Wikipedia:

Thom Yorke explained the idea of the lyrics to The Independent in 2006, saying, "It's for someone who has to work for a large company. This is a song against bosses. Fuck the middle management!"

Lyric quote:

I've given all I can, but were still on the payroll
This is what you get, this is what you get
This is what you get, when you mess with us

Employee benefits

MegaCorp employs a lot of people. Hundreds of thousands of busy worker bees, dedicated to the 'firm' and ensuring the CEO gets his next multi-million dollar bonus.

The HR (thats 'humanity reduction') drones promote the idea of excellent 'benefits':

Come and work for MegaCorp! We're big! We've got great stuff for you to do! We'll give you excellent employee benefits!

To be honest, the list of benefits (the one you reel off to a recruitment conmanconsultant) appears long and generous.

• private healthcare package
• death in service payout
• generous holiday allowance (starting at 25 days/year)
• pension scheme
• flexible working
  

However, look more closely.

• private healthcare package - I'm fortunate enough to live in a country that provides a free[1] national health service; private health care appeals but there is a tax penalty
  
• death in service payout - a genuine and useful benefit. Of course, you'd need to die to make use if it.
  
• generous holiday allowance (starting at 25 days/year) - this one does exactly what it says on the tin; whats not written is how you'll need to use half of your holiday time to take regular small breaks away from 'work' in order to preserve your sanity and prevent burnout.
  
• pension scheme - what you 'sacrifice' from your salary is matched by the firm (so there is twice as much money for which they're not liable for tax)
  
• flexible working - you can adjust your hours & location to accomodate your lifestyle. Of the people I've consulted, MegaCorps idea of 'flexible' is vastly different to everyone elses.
  

Remember that employee benefits are a useful exercise for Megacorp; it reduces their tax burden, provides a way to suck in new victimsemployees and gives an entire HR department something to do.

So to balance the list of 'employee benefits', here is the list of 'employee risks':

• lack of sleep, stress and ultimately burnout
• instutionalisation - become stuck in the MegaCorp rut
• career dead end - MegaCorp is like a black hole, nothing escapes
• skills devaluation - do things the MegaCorp way; not transferrable to anywhere else
• increased risk of going postal

Proud to be part of the MegaCorp world.

Toy theft rocks MegaCorp

by Our Guy on the Spot

Two senior managers at MegaCorp were left crying into their trust funds yesterday, when a nasty man threatened to take their toys away.

Mr G.R.R. Jarhead and Dr. J. Quincy, from the Detection After the Fact That Something Odd was Done division, found themselves strongly resenting suggestions that their product was (to quote an unnamed source) 'a badly-implemented, ludicrously expensive pile of poorly thought-out shite'.

Following MegaCorp standard operating procedure, they immediately set about hiding the truth in an avalanche of remarkably uninformed and bitter criticism of competing products.

Luckily for Quincy and Jarhead, their monitoring product has no effective filters for lies, misrepresentations and other MegaCorp staple items (and no effective means of acting on the result of such filters if they should ever exist); so they were able to communicate effectively their ignorance of the subject matter to a wide, contemptuous and slightly bemused audience of considerably more intelligent people.

The matter was left with the MegaCorp status quo safely preserved. No advantageous changes were made, no money was saved; as a result, inefficiencies continue apace and stock prices continue in freefall.