Back to Karl Koweski's Artist PageTo the Artist's Page     Back to the Unlikely Stories home pageTo our home page
the daisy chain of marital doomTo Karl Koweski's next piece


the one minute manager

the new manufacturing manager tells the assembled
employees that the factory's declining profit margins,
past due deliveries and pissed off customers is not
the machine operator's fault; the blame belongs to

management

that said: in order to save $126,000 during the next
six months, the air conditioning units inside the factory
will be disengaged (office air conditioners will remain
activated, of course, so the computers won't overheat)
employees will also be required to work two hours
over during weekdays, eight hours every Saturday,
and all gain share bonuses, computer loans, and
school reimbursements will cease until further notice.
hopefully, we can weather this next year without
shutting the doors

he hands out to the supervisors copies of The One
Minute Manager, a sort of Who Moved The Cheese
for factory hatchet men, and in order to assuage the
angry employees he just vigorously fucked in the ass
he relays the following analogy from the book

a guy walking along a mountain ledge slips and falls
off the side, grabbing a jutting branch on the way down.
he clings to this branch on the side of a sheer cliff face
brambles and sharp rocks fifteen hundred feet below.
at a loss, the guy screams for help until a voice from
above hollers "let go".  the man hanging from the
branch asks "is there anyone else up there?"

the point to this story, this one minute manager tells
his anally ravaged employees is that there is no one else
you can only have faith and do as he says.

the correct analogy that comes to mind goes like this

a guy walking along a mountain ledge is ambushed
by an officious sonofabitch who throws him off the cliff
where a jutting branch stops his descent; hanging there
this hard-working man screams for help, the one minute
manager laughs and implores him to let go of the branch

so he can finish the job

To the top of this pageTo the top of this page