To hell with Fish! For Life

The BBQ Pit
1

Ever since Who Moved My Cheese, management consultant and speakers bureau wannabees have been churning out childish dreck by the ton, and this Pitting is in a sense directed at ALL that crap and particularly at the stupid management blindness that spawns it.

Fish! For Life is about how the employees of the Seattle Fish Market “changed their lives” by taking a different approach to their work – to learn to LOVE working with smelly fish all day, instead of hating it.

Amazingly stupid as it is, this is the essential message of this “book” – that you can make workplaces happier and businesses more successful if employees will just learn to LOVE their work instead of HATING it, or being indifferent to it.

Does anybody spot the fundamental flaw in this idea? I see a slew of hands out there, so I’ll just say it – their thesis is TOTALLY OUT OF TOUCH WITH THE REALITY OF WORK!!!

People work for money! MONEY!!! MON-FUCKING-EY!!!

Got that? MONEY! People work for MONEY!

People need money to live, and generally the more of it they have, the better they live. This is especially so in a vicious dog-eat-dog capitalist society with little or nothing in the way of safety nets that America is becoming.

If you’re working at the bottom of the economic ladder, you are fucking unhappy. You are one step away from being evicted from your shithole of a room and having to find somewhere else to park your week’s supply of ramen noodles, your bicycle and your dozen or so paperback books that constitute your only possessions. You aren’t happy about this. You see people around you driving cars, going on nice vacations, eating out in nice restaurants, all things you have little or no chance to do on your wages.

It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference how much happy talk management makes, or whether they let you wear funny hats and say funny thing while you gut fish. You are, if you are normal, gonna be WAAAY FUCKING UNHAPPY about your situation. If not immediately, soon.

You stupid fucks, you can parrot gibberish all you like and make up parables and cite this or that weird anomaly to the huge pool of anger and unhappiness that constitutes the American workplace, but if you want people to be happy, they have to make enough money to lead a decent life. And there aren’t many people who think a society whose minimum wage is less than half the “living wage” in many areas is a good one.

You want your workers to be happy, give them lots of money! They’ll wear idiot grins while they gut fish whether you let them wear silly hats or not.

Nothing, fucking NOTHING else will work.

Stupid fucking management asskissing cocksultants.

2

oh man, I love this bullshit motivational crap. The people who put out this shit are always near the top of the food chain and they think they can tell people who are earning shit for money how to just be happy at their jobs.

Companies will so often treat employees like nothing more then warm bodies, then expect them to treat the company like it’s some fantastic lifelong commitment- give me a break. I work for what I think is a great company now, and I have no delusions that they wouldn’t cut me loose in a heartbeat if it meant a few more cents in profit for them. To ask people to “LOVE” a job that clearly sucks is just humiliating and ridiculous when you’re driving your Mercedes to your next motivational speaking tour stop.

3

Heh. They did this at the food distributor I worked for a few years ago. Not only is the book crap writing, they slap in a cheesy romance between the harried banking supervisor and the fishmonger she learns the wisdom of loving your work from!

“Choose your attitude” indeed. I’ll choose my attitude commensurate with how much net I’m pulling in, and I ain’t talking about fishing…

4

I’ve been to many leadership courses and read the books and listened to the propoganda. I’ve always managed to learn a couple of things from each venue.

The thing that bothered me about Fish was that it seemed you had to change your personality to use it. Most of this rah, rah bullshit is orientated to extroverted types. I asked what do you do with the guy who goes about his job in an efficient manner and just wants to be left alone for the most part to do it? Well, if he doesn’t buy in he should look for a different job as this isn’t the direction the company wants to take… WTF? A guy who is doing his job should get fired because he doesn’t want to act like a buffoon? Sorry, you need the pluggers and the detailed types to hunker down and get work done along with the rah rah types. Nothing wrong with having fun, but work needs to get done.

I’d just once like to have the people in charge worry more about the core business instead of the performance initiative of the week. That I can deal with. That and a wheel-barrel full of money. I don’t get out of bed without it. The more of it you give me the more I might take a personal interest in keeping it coming. Real easy: Carrot=money; stick=no job, no money. That is really all the motivation I need to show up for work and do a decent job. If you want to throw in a few attaboys, all the better. Otherwise get out of the way while I do the job you’re paying me for.

5

Sounds like Evil Captor has a case of the mondays.

Perhaps if he had change for a paradigm[1], his outlook would be broadened. Just utilize your medium, and work towards success!
[1] WTF does “change for a paradigm” mean anyhow? How the fuck can change be a specific model?

6

Oh man, my uncle (who worked in a middle-management position in a credit union) showed us this video a year or two back, and he was all excited about it. He said getting the package with the video and the materials was extremely expensive, but he and his boss thought it was the most amazing thing, and the employees would love it, and so on. I thought it was all ridiculous bullshit, maybe useful for a few outgoing types like Uzi mentioned, but generally a waste of money and time. I could see a lot of employees rolling their eyes and shrugging the whole thing off.

7

It could be worse.

A group that sat in a set of cubicles adjacent to mine were once led in a performance of “If You’re Happy and You Know it Clap Your Hands” by their manager as a morale-booster. That’s what happens when management can’t afford the stupid videos.

8

In case anyone hasn’t been here yet:

9

Wait, let me guess. There was at least one enthusiastic clapper and the rest were singing “If You Pay Me and I Know It, I’ll Clap My Hands.”

10

I would have to take the rest of the day off and go to a pub if I was ever forced to participate in such a charade. While drinking I would deeply evaluate the prospect of finding work elsewhere.

11

Now, I do know one fish market shop in Seattle where the employees do seem to enjoy their work. I forget the name, but it’s a local institution. When somebody orders they start yelling and tossing seafood everywhere (and catching it), then get the fish or whatnot back to the back to fix up. But that’s part of the game. Thing is, they’re out doing it and having fun with work; it’s not like sombody came along and just decided to be happy one day.

12

That’s the same fish market in the corporate video.

13

I’d lead my group in a performance of “If You Work In a Room With Other People Shit The FUCK Up” and see where that takes morale.

14

Oh I took this training course here. It was a cute little middle-school reading comprehension level book. I’m happy these people are happy with their fish job, but seriously, I’m with Evil on this: pay us more and treat us like humans (we have families, homes, cars, friends, lives of our own too) and maybe we’ll throw away the voodoo dolls of you. It’s sad, they wouldn’t want their family treated this way and we’re the ones lining their pockets. :mad:

15

I think it’s a play on words - change for a “pair of dimes.”
I absolutely hate these little motivational shticks they pull on us about twice a year. Six Sigma and “Lean” this or that - the latest one is Defect behind the Defect…

Makes me wanna defect or defecate, I’m not sure which.

On my wall I have a sign that says Git 'er Done. That’s my motto, stolen from Larry the Cable Guy.

Just let me work, people.

16

Did anybody else think that Evil Captor was swearing off seafood for all eternity? I was all set to slap him up side the head with a dead salmon.

17

It seems to me that motivational seminars are the white-collar equivalent to the Walmart Cheer. Fsck 'em over and make them say “thank you sir may I have another?”, only the initiation ceremony lasts until retirement.

18

Duh! It’s what happens when employees are empowered to think outside the box!

19

A paranickle and five parapennies?

At any rate, I (thankfully) don’t know nuthin’ 'bout no motivational video, so I pit publishers who put Punctuation! in the Middle? of Their Titles.

20

You are invited to present this topic at the upcoming Retreat.

Meantime, let’s all do the Fish Cheer!

*Gimme an F!

F!
Gimme an I!

I!
Gimme an S!

S!
Gimme an H!

H!
What’s that spell ?

FISH!
What’s that spell ?

FISH!
What’s that spell ?

FISH! **

*from Country Joe and the Fish