Culture: Self-Help
6 Months In A Leaky Boat   (+9, -2)  [vote for, against]
Worried that you're not really "Management Material"?

BubbaCo Subhuman Resources Division runs a number of training courses for aspirant managers, not unlike the redoubtable Xe (formerly Blackwater but renamed in similar fashion to a former popstar whose public profile evaporated after a similar change in corporate identity).

Our most popular course** is one that emphasises an individual's capacity for self-reliance, self-effacement and self-abuse.

We literally cast you adrift in a remote area of the southwestern Pacific Ocean, in a boat that leaks at a controlled rate designed to allow you no more than four hours continuous sleep without the boat filling with water and soaking you.

Food, at a subsistence level, is supplied. You are encouraged to plan your consumption rate carefully, to simulate operating on a limited budget.

Every so often, one of our highly trained operatives, working from a submerged submarine, slips aboard your boat and inserts a sharp object into a difficult-to-reach spot in your back, apparently for fun. In reality, it is a simple simile for loss of faith in you by your immediate superior.

**Course participants may be required to sign a waiver absolving BubbaCo SRD of any liability for subsequent physical, spiritual, psychological or imaginary effects, deleterious or otherwise, such waiver to be of effect for indefinite duration.
-- UnaBubba, Sep 29 2009

What is [Ian] talking about? http://www.google.c...a+leaky+boat+&meta=
[hippo, Sep 29 2009]

Evil is a word bandied about these days so that the meaning is often diluted. You are, however, most definitely sadistic.

(+)
-- Jinbish, Sep 29 2009


Every few days you will have to dismantle and completely rebuild your boat as a metaphor for the love of large corporations to disguise internal problems by restructuring. Having done this, you will 'downsize' your boat by throwing an essential component - an oar - far away and then paddle frantically after it with the remaining oar to retrieve it, forfeiting a day's ration of food to symbolise the costs of redundancy and rehiring payments.
-- hippo, Sep 29 2009


Dammit, [hippo], I specifically asked you, when you signed our unofficial secrets act, not to divulge any proprietary course materials to the public. What ARE you thinking, man?
-- UnaBubba, Sep 29 2009


Good single from the Enz. Still play a lot of Disrythmia and Frenzy (the latter I think containing a lot of their most mature stuff).
-- Ian Tindale, Sep 29 2009


I have a sinking feeling about this.
-- phoenix, Sep 29 2009


Mea culpa. I was discussing executive training and the silly fad for survival courses in the 1980s, with a business associate today, when I thought of this idea. The title seemed appropriate, given the timing.
-- UnaBubba, Sep 29 2009


Maybe market this as an "extreme vacation" and catch the recently graduated lot who've never sat the '80s.
-- reensure, Sep 29 2009


Why does this sound so much like my career?
-- RayfordSteele, Sep 29 2009


We use you as an example in many of our practical exercises, [RS].
-- UnaBubba, Sep 29 2009


My favorite Enz record.
-- tatterdemalion, Sep 29 2009


For a complete simulation of corporate life, the experience should include a blindfold (to keep you in the dark) and an occasional plastic bag to urine dropped with amazing accuracy from a satellite, to give the genuine sensation of being pissed on from a great height.

[+]
-- 8th of 7, Sep 29 2009


Make that stale urine and you're hired as a course facilitator, [8/7].
-- UnaBubba, Sep 29 2009


Done.

Yay ! High Five !
-- 8th of 7, Sep 29 2009


//self-reliance, self-effacement and self-abuse.// so it's run by se(a)men ?
-- FlyingToaster, Sep 29 2009


Yeah, show us your coxswain.
-- UnaBubba, Sep 29 2009


//fad//

They've been watered down a bit, but sports and management courses are still going. After the last one, I now refuse to go to any S&M type events.
-- bigsleep, Sep 29 2009


Ah, team bonding... rubbing you up against a pack of irritating bastards you didn't like to start with, in the hope you'll somehow miraculously learn to like them after they've managed to "accidentally" dump you in a freezing lakeful of duckweed and water lice.
-- UnaBubba, Sep 30 2009


...or is [bigsleep] referring to a different kind of "S&M event"?
-- hippo, Sep 30 2009


[hippo] You obviously didn't read [UB]'s anno.
-- bigsleep, Sep 30 2009


I think he read it. S&M in the office is kinda frowned upon these days, unless the sadism is purely psychological and the masochism is down to the victim being afraid of trying to get a different job.
-- UnaBubba, Sep 30 2009


This song was banned in the UK during the Falklands war
-- simonj, Sep 30 2009


On HMS Herpes or HMS Invisible?
-- UnaBubba, Oct 01 2009


Would i be able to get a message to my girl if i did this?
-- nineteenthly, Oct 01 2009


Only if you were all in the same boat.
-- 8th of 7, Oct 01 2009



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