Thursday, February 5, 2009

There Really Is No Excuse

Despite (or possibly causing) the current economy, the large corporation that pays my bills has quite a lot of overhead, including a staff of workout coaches. Every morning while I’m sitting in my chair eating chips, I read the email from Head Coach Dork in which he exhorts the workers to eat right and get in shape in the company gym.

These emails serve a few purposes. First, they serve as a daily reminder that my building isn’t important enough to have a gym and its attending coach. But more importantly, they give me something to make fun of every single day.

Coach Dork starts out every email with a subject line that must contain the phrase “NO EXCUSES!!!” Then there are some “inspirational” quotations, followed by an E-Z medical article copied off the internet, and finally a bunch of congratulatory messages to various people around the country that ran marathons and the like.

Today’s email quoted Christopher Reeve. “We can either watch life from the sidelines, or actively participate...Either we let self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy prevent us from realizing our potential, or embrace the fact that when we turn our attention away from ourselves, our potential is limitless.”

Now, lest you think me even more cold-hearted and cruel, I just want to say that I honestly admired Christopher Reeve for his attitude and sheer willpower. By all accounts he was a great guy. But…really? You’re going to encourage people to get more active by quoting someone who’s famous for breaking his neck while being active?

Scrawny Mike then took it over the top by suggesting that the Reeve quotation was used because the one from Hawking was too long…

5 comments:

Karen said...

We used to get "Organizational Announcement" emails three times a day about new/old VPs. I think the inefficiencies of a company are proportional to the number of VPs.

Theresa B (of Nebulopathy) said...

K-Poo, I think you're onto something here. I feel a business efficiency book coming on... "Ridding Your Company of Vices". Or maybe "The Seven Virtues of a Vice-Free Company".

Jeff and Charli Lee said...

Boo-yah to scrawny Mike! That's too funny!

jeff said...

Hey, it's 'Scrawny Mike' -- give him some respect. He's like the Pope or Batman.

and then you take my name...

theresa: I'm generally all for vices but I think you could really ride that book concept. It's not as good as a blind spokesman talking about 'not being able to see customer service', but all those MBAs do need something to read.

Eric said...

"Head Coach Dork". Heh heh. That's pretty good.

Yes, I'm feeling very slighted about the gym thing. Why don't we get a gym? It's not like programmers are famous for being in superb physical condition.