Amerika

Most of us get excited a bit when a new year commences. We fake it maybe, but each of us still has a tiny shred of belief in Santa Claus. That, or at least a breath of irrational yet useful hope to greet the New Year.

Then some rotten individual just has to louse things up. Perhaps nobody checks that bureaucratic little box quite like Amerika’s KG, oops, I mean the CIA. They don’t just make mistakes. They don’t just drop an occasional touchdown pass on 4th down. They actually wrote a manual that proceduralized how to screw things up.

Here’s how you turn your typical meeting into a genuine nose-picking waste of life. I was unaware that really required an algorithm, but here goes…

Organizations and Conferences

Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.

Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.

When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committee as large as possible — never less than five.

Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.

Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.

Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.

Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reasonable” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.

The old B-School Bromide is to go faux-sagacious and rub your chin while intoning. “The speed of the leader is the speed of the team.” Here’s the AL-CIADA recipe for high-drag, low-speed leadership demotivating.

Managers

In making work assignments, always sign out the unimportant jobs first. See that important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers.

Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products; send back for refinishing those which have the least flaw.

To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions.

Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.

Multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing instructions, pay checks, and so on. See that three people have to approve everything where one would do.

So the meetings all kill enough time to yea, verily wound eternity. The leadership perfects the yoga position known as Cranial-Rectal Inversion. But that’s not enough to keep a purebred try-hard down. SpongeBob wants to be the best grill man in Bikini Bottom. He’s motivated from within.

But fear not, Comrades. The CIA knows how to reach into that wayward soul, grab any positive motivation right around the neck, and then choke it until it craps out and dies. Here’s how to make that ideal hard worker turn into a guy two Tec-9s short of Dylan Klebold. Their advice for being the true 2020 Employee of The Year follows below.

Employees

Work slowly

Work slowly.

Contrive as many interruptions to your work as you can.

Do your work poorly and blame it on bad tools, machinery, or equipment. Complain that these things are preventing you from doing your job right.

Never pass on your skill and experience to a new or less skillful worker.

They left out the part where you make certain that guy on the assembly line next to you rocking a bankruptcy and mortgage foreclosure doesn’t have a rivet gun handy. Put about seven guys like *that* on the team. Start the worst one at Quarterback or Goalie. And you too can tank for the 1st pick in next year’s draft like The Philadelphia 69ers Teams of a few years back.

Now the CIA* having issued guidance on how to tank the firm way on back in 1944 is good for a few mordant laughs. Perhaps that actually explains Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi. Oh, wait. Perhaps this really does explain our government, our last election, our NIH, and how things went everywhere in Amerika in 2020.

Was this last year all just a demented version of The Truman Show? Did our entire society just tank in hopes of drafting the dictatorial version of Michael Jordan to straighten the crooked ways around us all? If so, there may be more nurses doing tic-toc than our version of Pinochet has helicopters available on the airstrip for.

Whatever the truth, if it isn’t too bored to still be out there, the existence of this guidance will act as Muriatic Acid for the soul. I won’t quite be able to chock it up to honest stupidity when the people next to me screw it up. The hate truth does that to you. See too much of the reality around you, and you won’t be as think as you stoned you are. Maybe this is the perfect song to wish Amerika Happy New Year with in 2021….

* – They weren’t even known as the CIA back then. They were officially the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). So perhaps this was just the rough draft.

Tags: CIA, coup, government