Drunken Lemurs

I came across this quote in a Dilbert cartoon yesterday:

“Why does it seem as if most of the decisions in my workplace are made by drunken lemurs?”

Now, on behalf of all lemurs, I find the comparison to be offensive.  I also do not appreciate the implication that drunken lemurs are somehow responsible for the bad decisions they make.  Since lemurs aren’t capable of fermenting substances to the point that they become intoxicating, I think it is clear that human people should be held responsible.  In addition, I don’t think lemurs are necessarily given positions of importance in most organizations today.  So, in reality, bad workplace decisions are made by people, not lemurs.  The comparison or analogy simply does not make any sense.  I reject it completely.

Today, I heard through one ear about a company that was laying off some employees to reduce functional redundancy.  Through the other ear, I heard about a company trying to eliminate contractor expenses by having employees take on that work without going up headcount.  In both cases, the focus is on reducing expenses by eliminating positions within the organization.  It seems to me that there is a lot of nervous activity out there targeted at reducing expenses by messing with people’s ability to make ends meet.  Whatever “ends meet” means.  Where does that saying come from, anyway?

But that’s beside the point.  It is a demonstrated pattern that organizations cut employee-related expenses before most other things when times are tight.  This is a quick and easy way to effectively lower the flow of cash out of the organization.  When things get better, expansion begins, and employee expenses increase.  Employees are hired to compensate for the increase in business.  The analogy of a yo-yo dieter is perfect.  The scale goes up and down, but the fundamental issue that keeps real improvement from taking place remains at the core, pretty much untouched.  So much for organizational effectiveness.

It doesn’t work like this everywhere, but it works like this in a lot of places.  Especially in primate taverns.