Why I am losing my mind

I could probably get in some trouble for posting this.

In order to improve morale, the company I work for came up with what they call "BeeTee desk-top dolls." Here is what they look like:



BeeTee is a plastic weeble-like tchotchke about six inches tall. As they say, it is a "fun reminder that ... we're doing well and we're smiling about it." Whee! According to the announcement, you need to fill out a coupon to request one, but I guess they didn't have enough takers. They ended up coming around and putting one on each desk, whether you wanted one or not.

Today there was a new announcement about BeeTee in our Monday Morning Update e-mail:



It begins: "[BeeTee] desk-top doll for internal use only." I spent the rest of the morning wondering in which orifice they wanted me to insert it. No, seriously -- it looks like they're saying that BeeTee is confidential property of the company. It's also kind of embarrassing.

I used to work with a recent immigrant from the former Soviet Union. He told me that one of the strangest things he noticed about America was how familiar it felt to work for a large corporation. It was surprisingly like living in the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union, to motivate the workers, they'd give out little busts of Lenin or red banners emblazoned with the hammer and sickle motif. Here they give out BeeTees... To paraphrase Marx: "To each, what nobody needs."