Most of you suck

I hate going to work conferences and suffering through motivational speakers. These people get paid hundreds- even thousands- of dollars to come to events and tell little stories or reinvent lame hurrahs to stir productivity and morale in people whose jobs make them want to kill themselves. Getting out of a cubicle for three hours once a quarter to attend a mind-numbingly canned conference and being expected to get excited about one's potentially rewarding career is insulting. Thinking about the money the motivational speaker is getting paid to inspire you about the car-tab problem hotline makes you think about the raise you haven't received. Yet you're supposed to feel refreshed and invigorated about the challenges and opportunities of customer service? Please. This is nothing but cruel manipulation, and there is nothing anyone can say to make a job where you answer the phone all day to reply to inane questions fulfilling.

That's why I want to become a de-motivational speaker. I see far too many bank tellers and administrative assistants with blank stares and palpable lethargy to believe that these motivational speeches are achieving their intended purpose. That's because motivational speeches are just long lists of lies. Sure once in a while a copy boy rises through a company to make a large paycheck by the time he retires, but it's not like that story is ever about a copy crew who all rose to stardom in a corporation. No; the one copy boy who actually got somewhere probably has no friends and a large child-support payment. The best most of us can hope for is an occasional raise and a surprise inheritance.

If I were running a company I wouldn't want a bunch of pandering little sycophants always breathing down my neck about their great ideas for a project. I'd want them to know that they are mediocre at best and lucky they do not live in Sudan where people are fighting instead of working. "I know your job is not interesting and that you are capable of more than alphabetizing files every morning for an hour, so if you feel your skills are not being appreciated I suggest you go to communist China where everything is handed to you on a silver platter," I'd say to an employee who asked for a promotion he didn't deserve. This is the kind of thing I would discuss at my de-motivational seminars: complacence is key. People need to be grounded, not lifted up like little babies who can't handle the truth. "Most of you are going to die unmemorable," I'd say, "So the best you can do is work hard so the economy won't be so shitty when your kids are wandering through the corporate world like dumb sheep. And if you don't want to work hard, well, then you probably should not try to change jobs past the age of forty because you really have to have an impressive resume to get hired then."

Any time you have to sit through a motivational speech there are always these stupid little handouts with stories of people who made it to the top from seemingly-impossible beginnings. Oprah Winfrey was born in the South to very poor, African American parents. She was abused as a child and knew how the caged bird sings. Now she is the richest woman in America and thinks she invented the literacy movement. How is anyone supposed to identify with that? It's a freak story and Oprah clearly is not human.

At my seminars I will have handouts about perfectly average individuals who either really messed up or who became scapegoats for their middling work ethics. The mayor of New York city was walking through a legislative building in Albany one morning when he spied an office assistant whose computer monitor displayed a game of Solitaire shuffling some papers around on his desk. The mayor told an aide to fire the office assistant then and there. "It's not like I'm the only one who ever did this," said the 39 year old father of a toddler*. What a whiner. Obviously this man was not destined for success, and it's unlikely he'll work in the New York area again. He had been working at the office for six years and was still making $27,000 a year. The moral of this story is that if your job sucks a fat one deal with it because you have kids to feed. And NEVER play Solitaire-- instead, dream about your non-existent retirement because there is no way you can save enough to retire before you're practically dead on $27,000 a year.

I would cite staggering statistics on unemployment and mediocre salaries and the increasing tendency of employers to hire immigrants because of their diligence at work. People need to be afraid that they are going to lose their jobs almost every day or most of them will not work really hard a day in their lives at anything they don't care about.

Yes, it's high time we stop holding people's hands and expecting them to soar when office environments require clipped wings and extreme humility and gratefulness on the part of the employee. Motivation does not work because most people realize they will never be great. It may even be detrimental because if a worker gets on a high about his job for a few days then realizes nothing has changed he may become even more disgruntled. It is a far better strategy to bring workers down to their knees and make them appreciate what little they have in the world. By hiring me to speak at an office meeting administrators will not have to face the uncomfortable task of telling their employees that they will be cracking down and expecting more out of people.

*http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories//M/MAYOR_GAME_OVER?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT