" Middle Mis-Manage Til Kompany Dead!"
I heard muffled, hurried thumps, and sounds that must have been running footsteps. I could not get in a word and felt that I had witnessed something I should not have.
That night I could not get any sleep, I was midnight-talking from the shock I got. Can you imagine what I was feeling when I learned that The High Five were North-Korean agents? How many more can be?
What happened next?
Next day I got so upset that I started watching them and from then on, it was my mission to get the goods on them. Apart from their good-bye sentence I had no evidence against them. Their looks and habits were the same as their peers'. They did not look Far Eastern at all. The only suspicious thing was that their English was extremely poor but compared to the company's intellectual standards, that was not a differentiator. I had to work night out for months to get a breakthrough. Finally, I solved the puzzle.
Let me go back a little bit. Tell me more about those middle managers. What did you learn about them?
Casual coffees and unisex cigarillos (strictly separately, to consume as much time as possible) at least five times a day, cheap business lunches right from its opening until the canteen transforms into Happy Hour for Workaholics, face-to-face meetings in the farthest corners of the office where no one can see them: every time strictly with their own breed. Taking no responsibility neither for theirs nor their subordinates' actions, playing bullshit bingo instead of getting real feedback from the market, filling out their Outlook like a colourbook with non-existing client meetings, hiding behind Big Boss Daddy, sucking the blood out of their reps by randomly asking "Where New Money Tis Month?", just to name a few.
It is nonsense that they lack all business values, Mr Csupati. What are they good at?
Like ancient Japanese swordsmiths, they all possess their own distinctive mastery of... hmmm... wasting time and blocking work process. The most senior amongst them all, for example, uses a two hundred year old abacus every morning for two hours to calculate the HUF/KPW cross exchange rate and to proudly demonstrate how many pennies he pulls out of the company without work, despite the fact that the same index refreshes every 10 seconds on his screensaver. This guy has made his mark as a scholar (only in-house) by hiring the Bad and firing the Good with such speed that international physicists, if they would ever have heard of him, would be happy to lend him the name of 'The Great Fluctuator'.
The other Lady plays the role of a department psychiatrist. This is no wonder, though, every second headcount needs one. She was by the way born, raised and trained in brotherly USSR military camps, she is now Temporary Head of Gossip Distribution, which we all know what a brilliant way is to raise snakes. The first half of the month she spends with destroying her reps' self-esteem, then the second is saved for providing them (for funny money, of course) false illusions how special and highly appreciated they are.
Another two of them are not brand new in terms of already having worked for this very company. We call them the Prodigal Sisters or Wandering Sheeps. They used to work here, or more accurately, helped their male fellows 'spend valuable time' but later both were ordered to infiltrate in our biggest competitor where destructive attitude was a missing asset at that time. I am pretty proud of my company that we had found such smart tools to weaken business competition. The only shortage from our side was self-consistency because as soon as they got empty and useless, we let these tabbies come back.
The fifth is just a simple idiot.
I watch them in-house, at conferences and corporate events functioning as applause machines, and last but not least as Mrs Boss's pets. I want to know what they are doing, with whom they meet: the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are now assembled and a secret agent network emerges under the cover of seemingly innocent appointments. But what really shocks me is the realization that The High Five show perfect conformity with practically all of the other fellows on the same management level.
What??? You mean all middle managers are just like them?
You said that. I expanded the scope of my research outside the company and, beyond their daily routine, I discovered other similarities with representatives of this level. They all have middle management positions at different companies, from 'SOHO to MLE' as multinational corporations often hide their sizes and profit making capacities from public eyes with such misleading encryptions. These agents take part neither in the making of company strategy nor in its execution. While CxO's and low-grade subordinates are working their asses off, middle managers are staring in front of themselves day in day out pretending that a deadly important analysis on their computer is just about to be sanctified by their holy hands. I collected secret information, and it fully supports the theory I learned in closed forums and secret websites with months of deep research.
Now your story is getting weird: are all middle managers Communist spies?
Yes, they are and not in the positive context. I would rather call them saboteurs. They differ in age, sex, nationality and colour. What is common in them is the way they 'lead' their subordinates and relate to their superiors.
Which can not be an accident, right?
The situation is not that simple. All of them get educated to become bloody professionals strictly in destruction. Is it familiar when a middle manager of a sales department having no clue about sales stands behind the cold calling or rather cold sweating rep and keeps yelling at him how to close the deal? Or when instead of making it, she asks him to compile a presentation on sales figures and next day the same ppt lands on the Boss's table mentioning only one author? Guess whose?! There are companies where these little bosses' number passes the ones' they lead. And it is increasing day by day. We can almost be sure Communist agents have their hands on everything.
Why are they doing it?
North-Korea has been trying to get a grip on Western capitalism for a long time. After a serious number of unsuccessful military attempts, a local economic research team came up with the revelation under Kim Dangong's reign of how much damage unprofessional 'mini chiefs' can cause in the global business world. From here it is just one step to create the lethal Middle Management Program. They geniously rode the trend that market economies have far more leadership positions than experienced people to lead others in a given society. These useless headcounts are filled by the Communist Middle Manager Agents, practically unnoticed.
Meaning that even in our workplaces we must take them into account?
Definitely! We must keep our eyes open. By reading the obvious signs you can easily recognize them.
What are those obvious signs?
End of Part2. To be continued...
