When the saints go marching...

In an effort to recognize outstanding workers, the Enterprise has adapted their own version of a rewards program. Most people, if you ask them, will tell you that a generous bonus is the greatest reward a company can give. It's because, after all, if the employee is THAT valuable, they must be saving big dollars for their company. It's just an act of generosity to spread the wealth around.

However current trends in incentive reward programs say that employees don't want money. They want recognition. So the Enterprise has adopted a recognition program called, get this, "Pillars of Excellence."

It works like this: You do something great, someone writes a short discription about you, judges review all the entries for the month, they pick 2 or 3 people to present "The Pillar" to.

The Pillar is a two-and-a-half foot high lucite trophy-like monstrosity that you put in your small cube. One of the employees wired his with lights and a switch so that the pillars glow in the dark. While the Enterprise liked his inovation, they were not too pleased that one of their pillars was different than the other three. But that's a story for another post.

Anyway, the day they present the pillar to you is the day you fear. You see, the pillar comes with a marching band. That's right, you can hear the band playing in the elevator as it moves up through the floors. When the elevator bings at the floor destination, people scatter like roaches from a light. People dive for stairwells and bathroom stalls. Seriously. I've actually seen this. I've done it myself. Once I jumped into the stairwell only to discover three other people beat me to it.

Anyway, the band plays When The Saints Go Marching In which, as I've already stated, is when the people go marching out. The marching band uses a bullhorn to announce the the pillar and usually threads through the floor before marching in place at the poor receiver's cube. They read off the card that tells what the person did then make them say some words and lead the group in a cheer. Finally they'll give the victim a gift card to a restaurant that he or she doesn't really want to go to, they cut some cake and march off. Oh, and the marching song as they leave is the theme from the cartoon Looney Tunes. Seems appropriate.

Well, it could be worse. They could have kept the old recognition program. It was called The Superhero Awards. The "superhero" got a movie ticket and a Superhero doll. One of the folks down the cube lane from me got a Green Hulk doll. Now THAT was a quality item.

...dave
When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained. -Mark Twain (1835-1910)