everyone in my company bieng obsessed with gossip and rumors and not working at all. They just chat and chat about nothing and it all gets turned into some shallow half interesting story before they all get bored and move on to the next batch of nothingness. What am I to do?
Well, sir, you have two options. You can let them gossip and continue on with a low efficiency rating and be a mediocre company for the rest of your professional carreer, oooorrrr....
Try my product! The Drama Fix! The Drama Fix is a systematic procedure for curing all those chatterboxes of their need for something grand. Here's how it works.
You hire two "employees", Alice and Bob, actors from my association, and of the opposite sex. Hiring will be done in tandem to avoid anyone picking up on the ploy. They are charming, yet slightly aloof, but both are very atteractive and have a knack for demanding attention. They mingle and delicately stir attention from the most wayward groups. This continues on for six months and everyone is wondering if they have sex, and when, and how often, and where they were last weekend, yada yada, the whole thing is bent out of shape. Then comes the denouement.
Alice is fired. Nobody knows why, but the day she was fired the two of them were away in some filing room for a few hours with the door locked, and the boss had to rap on the door to get it open. Then, one day, the fire alarm goes off, and while everyone is out in the parking lot chatting away the usual...
Sunny day, about 150 people standing in the parking lot. The fire alarm sounds off in the background, and there is a mild tension in the air, nothing unusual for a pack of drones.
"I saw them having drinks, and I hear she likes alternative forms of sex!"
Enter Alice
She suddenly drives up to Bob with an empty box of condoms and says, "What the f*** is this! I found these under your bed next to the a*** p****! ("I knew it!") We don't even use condoms!"
"Well, I've been meaning to tell you, I just don't like your a** so much, so I've been f****** Larry for my fix!".
Alice gets out of the car and slaps Bob across the face. Bob graps her, thrusts her up against her car and squeezes her cheeks with one hand.
"Don't get me all turned on like this!"
Alice and Bob commence public sexual intercourse, everyones jaw is dropped. Just then, she says something about Bob's father, a cat, and a juicer, and cries frantically before pulling away from Bob and driving off, with Bob chasing her car down the road.
Nobody has seen the likes of either of them in months, but nobody wants to either. In fact, it took a full year before anyone mentioned the ordeal and that was only because someone was watching Animal Planet and they wondered if the horse's dong was bigger than Bob's.
The gossip tree is vacant these days, people want more out of life than an obbsessive immersion in the lives of the beautiful people around them. That is, this company has had its Drama Fix.
Flate rate service cost: 20,000 dollars
Average efficiency gains two years after, in dollars: 80,000 dollars.
You can do all the maths you want, sir. Here's my card, call me if your interested. Good day.-- daseva, Jun 29 2005 Actual verifiable happenings, witnessed by all or most of the office personnel - which are what is proposed here - are not suitable subject for gossip but for stories, tall and true tales to be recounted by individuals to new recruits when work is slow. Storiesare quite different from gossip and, being a form of entertainment, not interaction, are definitely not the social glue that keeps the office ticking over.
Gossip, on the other hand, is glue. It is boiled down from the four horses of speculation, rumour, prejudice and, most importantly of all, relationships. Gossip is about what people don't know, it's about what people didn't see and, yes, it's about how this will affect the gossiper and the gossipee. Gossip is background radiation. It is always there, it can't be removed and, if you listen closely enough, you can hear it bik b-bik bikking away, endlessly.-- calum, Jun 29 2005 I took Baconbrain's advice. (God does that sound odd.)-- blissmiss, Jun 29 2005 Well, at least someone's reading. G'night!
[bliss], you know you want to...
(Bacon's previous anno advised not reading my idea. He said it was smutty, anyway, for those keeping tabs.)-- daseva, Jun 29 2005 It's not a bad idea, but I for one could have done without the smutty.-- zeno, Jun 29 2005 There's a necessary shock factor here. Something repulsive, slightly... traumatic. That's how it works, anyway. The smut got in the back door.-- daseva, Jun 29 2005 Oohh Matron.-- zen_tom, Jun 29 2005 random, halfbakery