"Let's form proactive synergy restructuring teams."
- Scott Adams

"Remind people that profit is the difference between revenue and expense. This makes you look smart."
- Scott Adams

January 16th, 2003

Lupita Sabastian, a now former co-worker of mine (as of 2/25/2003), sent this in. Bearing in mind the extreme low morale of my company, I couldn't resist publishing this.

Scott Adams in The Dilbert Principle stated that office meetings are a form or performance art. I tend to agree. Unfortunately, unless you are privy to the joke, the time spent there is similar to Danté's sixth layer of Hell.

This is her poem in blue.

The 8:30

Cubicle walls covered like cobwebs,
wearing empty coats,.
rows and rows of them.
They signal the cooler temperatures,
they give us a hint of the world outside.
Windows are only for the helicopter padded corporate boys.

Mind numbing, heart strangling meetings.
The soul has forgotten how to wander.
The stifling meeting killed its ability to soar years ago.
Sameness paves the roadmap of our compromise.

The meeting is in full swing,
The leader has charmed himself into thinking we care.
We have forgotten we are human.

We moo prodded down the chute,
our corporate path, littered with little dreams,
snuffed desires,
and anonymous lives.

I write the details of the proceedings.
A mantra, a chant, an incantation,
To keep the echoing scream surfing my brain,
from escaping through my mouth.

It's logged.
It's counted.
It's verified,
Chained,
Bar coded,
Hand cuffed,
Certified,
Stomped,
Squashed.

The last seed of creativity, finally evaporated in the precious, process.

A cement lake of standardization pours through my veins.

… and the meeting continues,

hours of sand blown away from my life.

The employee of the month wanna-be,
waxes verbose on the value of the valueless.
A little cog in betted so deeply,
That he is proud of his cogginess.
The long winded soliloquy of the yawn,

Slowly… slowly… slower… slows
The last neuron from firing.

My mind finds the center of the meeting's abyss.
Here in the blackness of nothing
all brain waves merge in the
continuous tone of a heart's death sound.

And the sales pitch is finally struck.
"Were a team!"
"Were part of the process!"
"Our input is of value!"
"Our life will be better!"
"Our products will shine!"

The mote of dust continues rambling,
Never noticing that all have stopped listening.

We're a team! … (tick)
We're a team! … (tock)

We have finally given in.