Employee Satisfaction Survey

I have some…stuff I need to work on today. Super-secret, highly glamorous and impressive stuff. I can’t tell you about it, but trust me, it is intriguing as hell. So instead of a regular post, here’s a poem from “The Acme Employee Handbook”, which will be released, by me, in e-format soon.

Employee Satisfaction Survey

Are you plagued by high absenteeism? Or is there just a general malaise that permeates the hallways, and you can't quite identify the source?  --From a corporate surveying website

The Company knows that our employee’s job satisfaction is paramount to our success. Please take a few moments to complete this (mostly anonymous) survey, as we are not loathe to ask what cunning dread gnaws at your guts at 3:00 a.m., or where in your body failure resides--the cold conviction that somewhere in life you missed a critical turn, that the opportunity to become who you were meant to be is gone, that in one moment of inattention, or with one big feckless decision, or perhaps with a series of tiny, untraceable, but no less negligent choices, your Last Chance vanished like a scared cat and the door that opened to the path of your highest potential slammed shut and was sealed forever like an evil portal in a sci-fi comic.

On a scale of one to ten, how close are you to being the person you thought you would become? When you loll at your work station, staring listlessly into your cup, do you ruminate obsessively on why you don this role each morning like an itchy costume, and for that matter, why you ever listened to society at all? At what point you got soft, shape-shifted into subdued citizen instead of starting up that business, pursuing sculpture, trying to make a go of it in stand-up? And yet here you are now, taunted by some irrational part of you that still yearns to find some meaning in your day-to-day labors, even though management is out of touch and wasps have nested in the window sash and the fern they mailed you for your five-year anniversary curls brownly in its plastic grave, the cheery little card faded with exposure to florescent.

Do you feel that you are given feedback, or that your only feedback is the continuous thrum of low-grade disappointment coursing through your teeth? Are you happy with our suppliers? Would you like an incentive program? Or do you feel that work well done is its own reward, except it isn’t anymore and you want a thank you now and then damnit, or a little recognition for your efforts. Perhaps you fantasize about a transfer to Janitorial, where at least you can see some results, something accomplished, a dry floor, a lustrous commode. On a scale of one to ten, with one being more or less okay with it all and ten being rapturously at ease, overall how satisfied are you with your work at The Company? Please answers all questions honestly, and do not make multiple selections.

--Kristen McHenry