IT: Layoffs

Every day, a small Ant arrives at work very early and starts work immediately, no browsing, no checking cricket scores, no tea break even before starting the day. Ant used to work with 100% efficiency and was happy with the work. Lion, the CEO of the company was surprised to see Ant working without supervision. Lion thought if the Ant can produce so much without supervision, will it not produce even more with proper supervision.

So Lion recruited a Cockroach with extensive experience as supervisor and was famous for producing excellent reports. The Cockroach’s first decision was to set up a clocking in attendance system. As expected Cockroach was not going to do work by itself, so recruited Spider as secretary to attend phone calls, help write reports and manage archives. The Lion was delighted with the Cockroach's reports and asked for graphs to describe production rates and to analyse trends for presentations at Board‘s meetings.

So the Cockroach had to buy a new computer and a laser printer. Again Cockroach was not going to do all this building of graphs and reports by itself, so recruited a Fly as its assistant to manage computer, build reports, print the presentations, organize them for board etc. The Ant, who had once been so productive and relaxed, hated this new plethora of paperwork and meetings which used up most of her time.

The Lion came to the conclusion that it was high time to nominate a person in charge of the department where the ant worked. The position was given to the Worm, whose first decision was to buy a carpet and an ergonomic chair for his office. The Worm also needed a computer and a personal assistant; so worm got someone from its previous department as assistant to help prepare a Work and Budget Control Strategic Optimisation Plan.

The Department where the ant works is now a sad place, where nobody laughs anymore, nobody enjoys their work, lack of motivation and productivity was to the lowest. It was at this time that the Worm convinced the boss, the Lion, of the absolute necessity to start a climatic study of the environment. Having reviewed the charges for running the Ant’s department, the Lion found out that the production was much less than before.

In order to fin d the cause of reduction of production, Lion recruited the Owl, a prestigious and renowned consultant to carry out an audit and suggest solutions. The Owl spent three months in the department and came up with an enormous report, in several volumes that concluded:

"The department is overstaffed, need immediate reduction of staff"

You don’t need to be genius to know who the Lion fires first. The Ant, of course, because Ant showed lack of motivation, increased frustration and had a negative attitude towards whole work environment.


Source: Mail forward