The Working Room

Testimonials are important. It has the same value as an actor or athelete endorsing a product s/he never used or ever will use. But we buy the soap, the crapsh*t product, anyway, right?

Considering how much gets outsourced: What’s to stop this trend from becoming a provider of  job references? They do everything else – from scheduling our personal affairs to an assistant calling people on our behalf. Why would it be impossible to claim being an independent arm of a foreign entity? Corporations love foreign enterprises and who knows who anybody is anywhere? No matter what people think LinkedIn and Facebook wont help.

I love these articles by HR “Experts” who caution people – in this desperate economy – not to phony baloney up the resume. Sort of like how the ex-CEO of Tyco, Dennis Kozlowski, never actually graduated from the college(s) he claimed to have attended? I’m not talking about his purported crimes. I’m talking about the fact that a number of CEOs, like him, are running companies with phony baloney resumes.

They got where they were based on fabulous job references. They had the right connections, which were so solid no one ever gave their bogus backgrounds a serious look-see. Now, when guys like this commit these offenses the twits in the media go chirping about how honesty will set you free.

No, it doesn’t. Not in this society. Certainly not in this world. The best liars get elected,  hired, and promoted. They win the day.

This crappola about honesty is that it keeps people in low wage jobs with little prospect of moving up. Corporate America is not about a job well done. I will rephrase that: one cannot be a workhouse, and expect any good to come of it, unless you have dedicated suck-up sycophantic cheerleaders telling everyone how fantastic you are at the job, whether it is the truth or not.

That’s why I say, if that is all a reference is good for: Why not hire a bunch of good actors, get the kind of background created like in that entertaining show, Leverage, go forth, and move up the Corporate America ladder? One of the things I’ve always noticed about head honchos, in most organizations starting from mid-level directors on up, is how good they are at stealing the ideas of others, taking credit for their work, claiming how hard they work and always, always networking (chatting up their cheerleaders) as to how they are the greatest thing since slice bread.

And it bloody well works. All the damn time.

I don’t hate them. I am envious. I wish I was a successful psychopath* on the job too.

The sociopath is that truly self-absorbed individual with no conscience or feeling for others and for whom social rules have no meaning.

CHARISMATIC PSYCHOPATHS are charming, attractive liars. They are usually gifted at some talent or another, and they use it to their advantage in manipulating others. They are usually fast-talkers, and possess an almost demonic ability to persuade others out of everything they own, even their lives. Leaders of religious sects or cults, for example, might be psychopaths if they lead their followers to their deaths. This subtype often comes to believe in their own fictions. They are irresistible.

Definition lifted from: cassiopaea.com