One of the benefits of retirement is that I’ll no longer have to sit through (maybe) boring sessions and break out sessions”, “team building”, “focus groups”, “diversity instructions”, inclusiveness training”, “gender focus”, “quality circles”, etc., etc., etc. That is unless social security somehow finds a way to implement such BS in order for you to receive your SS check. Glad to be retired? You betcha.”
Amen brother.
The only thing I miss re the above was the fun of throwing reality into these bs sessions/discussions.
The company, I spent close to 3 decades with, had a little over a 1,000 sales reps. The reality there was about 100 of us carried the rest of the reps/the company re actual sales.
Most of us in that 10% developed a hard skin and a sense of reality that let our supervisors and theirs and the top dogs, know that without us the company would go belly up. My private discussion with the flag raisers, was simple: Don’t po us/me nor make u/mes depressed. Leave us alone to do our jobs. If you don’t leave us alone, you will not have a job. That worked for close to 30 years, until I got a great early retirement offer. About half of the good 100 reps took the early retirement.
Shortly after the first batch of the good reps left, the home office got rid of the good people inside, who worked with the good reps. One day the good home office people showed up for work and were met at the security gate. Then they were told to drive to another parking lot, check in with guards at the gate and stay in their cars. Shortly after they checked in they were escorted by security guards into trailers, to receive a Kinko’ paper box with their personal belongings and sign papers that they were no longer with the company.
Then, they were escorted by the security people, back to their vehicles and led out of the parking lot. The local police had set up no parking zones 2-3 blocks from the entrances. So if they wanted to talk to a fellow fired peer, they had to drive down the street into a not very nice neighborhood.
All of those escorted off the property, had been to several if not dozens of the above require motivational training programs. It really helped them. (Sarcasm)
Several hundred of the remaining sales reps were terminated plus a division of about 200 reps, who never should have been hired. We joked that they were the inadequate PC sales division. They were the equal opportunity hires. Their training was basically the Rah/Rah bs.
More massive cuts in the sales force followed on a regular basis. The few good reps still there ended up with impossible quotas and bs from psycho managers. They either left or became depressed and worthless sales reps.
The company in spite of vast capital resources closed its doors in a little over a decade after many of us left. The good reps who stayed carried the losers until they had enough and left.
That's John Galt and the Twentieth Centiry Motor Company right there. Only, in "Atlas Shrugged", the unproductive people were not fired. They were kept on the payroll (as a kindness) and the few productive people had to work harder to support them. Bit by bit the productive people decided to be just as unproductive as the rest. John Galt was one of the few who actually "quit".