we suck young blood

I was reading Tim Duncan's bio on a site, and it inspired me to, along with my overwhelming sense of cynicism on this Friday of joy and gladness (only 5 days of work left! Exciting!) write something brutally true and yet over the top exaggerated. and that would be how my institution eats its young.

Not the visiting young, but the new employees. I don't know if this is the case in the real world with real money dollar jobs, but I have seen a lot of super-swift hire-quit actions go down here. Let me explain how somehow, a renowned institution of 400+ employees has built a management system that contrives to suck the souls out of people.

Scenario 1: The impossible situation
There is one senior manager here (and by here, I mean collecting a fat paycheck) who actually lives in New York and is getting her doctorate. I'm not sure how that works. Who okayed this? I mean, what person in there right mind said, 'ah yes Barbie, we should pay her a lot and make her supervisor of 15 people on site, but pay for her to live far away and come to town whenever she wants'? I guess it could work, if she was a stellar manager/communicator, but here no one is a stellar communicator, and Barbie is worst than most.

A testament to this is the way that she can't keep people working for here for any long period of time. New hires are not hired/interviewed by her, so they are never forewarned of her *&*#*&-ness. Barbie will then roll into the scene at her leisure, and about 50% of the time, after the visit we are looking for a new hire. The swiftest hire-quit process I saw was within 24 hours of Barbie's landing at SFO. I am not sure if this is her record. I feel a little bad. The only ones who make it are just like her. It's an impossible situation for people who do not want to become conniving.

Scenario 2: Failure to drink the kool-aid
This is common, when the person hired has been a little lured in by our "mission" and "vision." Then they get in and take a good scope around and see that those were some really awesome pretty-lies we construct in order to not hate ourselves at the end of the day. Many people cut and run at this point. A few stick around, and some get so caught up in the kool-aid that they ask to franchise the stuff so they can peddle it to other unsuspecting folk.

An example of this can be seen, ironically, in our recruiter. He started in October. His last day is Wednesday. Which is too bad for Earnesto, because it means the person he was counting on to find my replacement will not be there. Which kind of means it will be a long time before there is a replacement. Oops!

Scenario 3: They saw behind the curtain
Last year for Camille's birthday, we, plus Renaldo, went to lunch. This was still when Renaldo was having a death-crush on Camille, and as part of his awkward ritual mating dance he had the Hopes & Dreams talk. Way too early in the wooing, buddy. No wonder you failed. But even at the time it was apparent that of the three of us, I was a #2, and they were going to either be lifers or have a #3 moment sometime soon. hopes and dreams don't make it very long here.

Think about it in these terms: Under the guise of 'creative engines,' the place sucks hopes and dreams up and then uses them to power the institution's Project Negative Value. I envision the movement to be similar to that of the beast in Yeats' poem "The Second Coming," slouching towards the target.

When people see past the eyewash and the kool-aid, what they basically see is the machine room of the Hopes & Dreams giant vacuum, and scales fall from eyes quickly. This is how we lose the most promising talent. They go and say, hey, if there is going to be a wizard behind the curtain, it should be something that grants wishes, or at least looks like Cary Grant, and not something that will eventually see me a dried up old bag with no additional training. And then they leave (usually not until I have told them something embarrassing about myself; they have phenomenal interrogation skills).