Launch the Torpedos

Greetings avid readers. Please don't faint - it's two posts in a week. What can I say? The Mecca is a happening place.

So... you run a company, and you have been trying to bolster the share price so that you can find more little girls willing to let you steal their stuff. What do you do? You could always resort to the "product launch". Who cares that you've been trying to sell your product for six months already? Who cares that it really doesn't work? Who cares that you have no defined way to determine if a customer installation was successful? Who cares that the engineering team is coming up with band-aids daily? It doesn't matter. The fact is that nothing jazzes investors like a good product launch. Of course nothing sinks a ship like a good torpedo launch either.

Swiper and the Fearful COO have disappeared from sight in order to concoct a way to get the most mileage from a momentous event that they will be unable to recycle for at least six months. Of course, the hiding phase is followed by the now familiar flurry of activity. Change the company logo. Change the company colours. How about those press releases that really say nothing? Perhaps that is a result of the fact that the Mecca is currently in litigation with the company that does their media relations. Something about unpaid invoices. Or maybe there's nothing to say that wouldn't result in an SEC investigation. But, I digress.

Anyway, all of the pieces are in place. Recycle the same "customers" that we have been "shipping product to" since the very beginning. These guys have seen lots of instruments. Some day, they might actually pay for one. The only missing element is the company bling. It's a product launch, so they need to do something nice. They need to make sure that we feel that our dedication and team work are deeply appreciated. So, they gave out very nice polo shirts with the company logo.

I know what you are thinking right now... "what's wrong with that?" I forgot to mention that directors, VP's, and important people got that. The Proles got tacky plastic lunch boxes, defective coffee cups that hold approximately 1.5 ounces of coffee (trust me... that may be a favour though), and slightly different shirt. Rather than the nice polo shirt, the peons got $2 T's with the following slogan. "$mart A$$ays, not Half A$$ays". Great. My employer gave me a shirt that's too vulgar to wear to work. That's class.

Note that my security team has insisted that I replace the S's with $'s. Although, after a quick web search, it seems that even the marketing geniuses at the Mecca are not dumb enough to use that slogan in their literature.