Welcome! We are so delighted to have you on board. We are thrilled to add such a bright, creative, hard-working visionary like yourself to our team. We so enjoyed getting to know you and your work better throughout our eighteen-month application process, and we appreciate all of the ideas you brought to the table — the ways you hope to shift, innovate and improve upon life here at our humble organization. And we cannot wait for you to implement all of it.
In the interest of full transparency, we are extremely eager for you to shake things up, to try something new, to reimagine the way we work and the work we do. We are looking for change. Big change. The sky’s the limit. There is nothing too bold, too pioneering or too trailblazing. We want to be more forward-thinking, more diverse, more inclusive, more relevant, more groundbreaking.
WE WANT CHANGE.
As long as everything remains exactly the same.
Yes. We want you, groundbreaker that you are, innovator among humans — an individual who very clearly detailed your sustainable vision in powerpoint, spreadsheet and bloody entrails within your rigorous portfolio packet — we want you to take all of your vital potent life force of initiative and we want you to change the very face of our organization.
As long as it costs us absolutely nothing.
And by cost, we don’t mean funds. Exclusively. Obviously, we mean funds. But also, we mean forfeiting any of our previously-held, formerly-practiced belief systems, habits and behaviors. So in addition to not expending any additional funds, we also do not want to expend any more time, effort, or mental space for anything new, different or evolutionary. No rearranging of schedules, no introduction of new models, and particularly no conversations about any of the specificities that enable the monolith to continue its cycle on the deified hamster wheel toward ultimate annihilation of the worker bee.
We want you to change — to make the change.
Look, no one is happy with the way things are here. Including me. Everyone is overworked and underpaid and in desperate need of a respite that is as elusive as the cost-of-living wage increase we never get but which seemed to be mutually agreed upon when we were hired.
We are desperate for things to operate differently in our organization — to be more equitable, fair, and include terms like “work-life balance” and “community engagement” and “sustainability.” No one here actually knows what those terms mean — or else has been cowed by the relentless juggernaut that is the organization into subservience in order to hold onto a fragile simulacrum of power – which brings us to you! You are a bright shiny penny found amidst the rubble after the fall of Rome.
We can’t wait to see how you fit in!
I’d tell you whose office this was, but we don’t talk about our former employees much like people don’t say the name Voldemort. Let’s just imagine they all died. You may notice that the air in here is thick with the cosmic fug of defeat and complacency, but that is the reason we hired you!
Just bend at the waist, that’s it! Get a little closer to the ground where the air is clearer. Yep, down on your knees. See? Now you can breathe without choking on the rot of sycophancy and spineless corporate hell-power! If you lay completely flat, you might even be able to take a breath that is untainted by the misogyny, racism and capitalism on which this place was founded.
We recently changed our mission statement! We have genderless bathrooms! We hired a woman once!
We are proud to have such a valuable and vibrant change-maker on our team. And with an eye towards inclusivity, diversity and progress, we cannot wait to absorb you into the carefully constructed ecosystem we’ve perfected over decades! And in no time, you will see…
We want you to change!
This piece was originally published in MuddyUm.
Are you a change-maker?
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We hired a woman once. Haha. Corporate (hell) piece speaking truth to ridiculousness.