The Change of the iMed

Happily, happily
moving forward,
Into redundancy
Rode the six hundred.
‘Time now to innovate!
Reorganize!’ He said
Into redundancy
Rode the six hundred.

‘Forward, the iMed!’
Was there a manager dismay’d?
Not tho’ the researchers knew
Some one had blunder’d
Theirs not to make reply
Theirs not to reason why
Theirs but to heed Mackay
Into redundancy
Rode the six hundred

Chairman to right of them
Chairman to left of them
Chairman in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d
Promot’d to Green and Black Belt
SOPs they wrote and well
Into the jaws of Death
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred

Flash’d all their compounds pure
Flash’d their enantiomers
Saving the columns there
Purging with argon
While all the world wonder’d
Cringed while the SET spoke;
Emerging markets are the hope;
Eastern and Asian
Call’d to the site Town Hall
Cutbacks shone on the wall
Then they walked back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Chairman to right of them
Chairman to left of them
Chairman in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d
Promot’d to Green and Black Belt
While clinical candidates fell,
They that passed tox so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild change they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the change they made!
Honour the iMed,
Noble six hundred!

Communication

They told us the human footprint would be reduced
In order to create value within our portfolio of commoditized deliverables
And vertically realign the organization going forward.
We had no idea what they were talking about
So we went back to posting on Facebook.

The Clever Man

The man had his last clever idea.
Why should so much good leather be used to make such a simple boot?
Four boots could be made from two, he reasoned.
So the clever man fashioned a simpler boot and made four, not two.

Where once there were ten stitches, now there were five.
And where once there was a leather heel, now there was cardboard.
The clever man smiled as he looked at the simpler boot.
Not a single customer would be able to tell the difference.

Management were so impressed they closed the factory,
Firing the workers and selling the well-worn equipment.
As he walked past the workbench which once had been his own
The clever man held his head in his hands and wept.

The following spring the man encountered a familiar face.
It was a former employee who had lost all he had once owned.
Desperate and destitute, the embittered old employee beat and robbed him,
Crushing his bones and spilling his blood.

As the kicks rained down upon the once clever man
He was startled to recognize the very same boots he had toiled upon.
And as he raised his head to watch the final blow of a bootheel
He read "Made in China".  The irony was not lost on him.

Babbling

We spent the day self-indoctrinating.
Managerial occultists obsessed by pyramids and triangles.
Why do we analyze organizational structures
As though they were psalms or catechisms
And the photocopier was a Dead Sea Scroll?

If God ever put on a suit and tie,
Grabbed his briefcase and Blackberry
Then brought his auditing team in to review our books,
What a lovely mess of fish and chips he would enjoy
With all the pillars of salt he would make of us.

Ode to a Business Douche

Hey there businessman, you business douche
With your slick grin sleek suit slicked hair.
You passed me on your way to the cafeteria the other day,
You and your pack of grinning wolves

I spent the entire goddamn morning tapping my keyboard
Tapping my nerves tapping my patience
Looking at little cartoon business douches performing for me
In that ridiculous Code of Conduct training

I put my career and reputation on the line
So you could hang out at the coffee machine
Tittering like a schoolgirl with your espresso lungo.
Massaging your ego as you massage your mug.

You can slip and trip along as we all fall down
And you won't be around to put us together again
You will have jumped on board another ship. But that's fine
Because I'm banging your wife. Fucker.