Yes, it's true! We had to use much of our lobbying budget to ensure that Congress understood our pain, but they came around just fine! We are pleased to announce that after careful investigation, the SEC and other government agencies have found that Pointless, Inc. is "one of the biggest financial disasters of our era"! Thanks to ultra-aggressive financial mismanagement, our small company has leveraged its few assets into such an unfathomable wad of derivatives of derivatives of derivatives - whatever those are!! - that, in the words of one official, "make Enron and Lehman Brothers look like financially sound Cub Scout fund raisers in comparison."
The incompetence of our financial operations has officially exceeded the Federal Minimum Financial Incompetence Threshold (FeM-FIT), thus qualifying for us billions of bailout money to be used as we see fit. And that's just the beginning! This marks a new era of prosperity for Pointless. Those who helped bring us to this point, especially our executive team and accountants, will be rewarded when we announce the new executive bonuses after our emergency Tahitian retreat next week. Thank you for making this dream possible. And a big thank you also to the great taxpayers of America, without whose endless patience and generosity, this kind of corporate success could not be possible. We love you, America!!
Oct. 2008: Pointless Promotes Innovation!
Experts have reported that many of the best ideas come while showering. Now Pointless has unleashed the creative power of showers in the workplace, allowing employees to be innovative all day long! Once thought to be a defect in need of repair, the "false alarms" with our fire-safety system's overhead sprinklers have now been embraced as an opportunity for creativity and reduction in maintenance costs. In fact, we've tweaked it so it will go off at random more frequently, periodically giving employees a creative shower moment while in their cubicles, in the halls, or in meetings. Our water bill has gone up slightly, but we've countered by removing unneeded drinking fountains and shutting off the hot water heater. Another creative solution from the management at Pointless!
Pointless Wins More Major Contracts in Iraq!
Pointless, Inc. has just been awarded several lucrative no-bid contracts to manage various aspects of the reconstruction in Iraq. The specific contracts that we have been granted include Project 4354-02-UGH,"Operational Feasibility Analysis for Iraqi Infrastructure Sustainability" and Project 4354-32-GAG, "Deminimalization of Suboptimal Systemic Subsystems for Dedysfunctionalization of US Policy Implementation." We're not quite sure what these mean, but we're happy to report that we have begun taking delivery of large shipments of cash, thanks to the aggressive Iraqi reconstruction efforts of the current administration. An contrary to the allegations of some critics, these no-bid contracts were given based on our recognized capabilities and competencies, and have nothing to do with the fact that our CEO is a surviving hunting buddy of Dick Cheney.
As you may know, these are not our first contracts for rebuilding Iraq. Our first was Project 4014-16-OUCH, "Implementation of Corporate Performance Review Systems to Demoralize Captive Combatants at Abu Ghraib." As patriots and champions of liberty, we are proud to announce that our efforts to implement state-of-the-art corporate performance review systems at Abu Ghraib made a huge difference in global security and in the well-being of America. With our forced ranking system, 360-degree peer feedback, our meticulous performance assessment metrics, our deep-dive management interview program, and the use of Advanced Totally Subjective and Seemingly Disconnected from Reality and Everything Else Final Ratings Procedure®, even the toughest and most hardened terrorists became demoralized, despondent, broken-down peons willing to bow to our every patriotic whim.
In addition to enhancing security and saving countless millions from terror plots, this contract gave us our first profitable quarter in years, even after an accounting snafu that resulted in an inexplicable loss of most of the money. Naturally, we look forward to many more lucrative no-bid contracts, just one more reason why now is the time to invest in Pointless!
With Pointless in Iraq, you know it's going to be a better world.
To recognize and reward our best employees and help them be role models for others, the management at Pointless is proud to announce our new employee of the month Webcam program, based on the visionary work of our good friends at another leading corporation, Burger King. Each employee of the month will be honored with a unique uniform and will be placed in a special office suite of their own in front of our interactive Webcam. To inspire other employees, even those outside our Corporation, interactive features enable you to experience just how obedient and responsive our best employees are. When you type in a command, they see the command on a monitor in the room - but they think it's coming from a V.P. See how they respond! Learn what it takes to succeed. (Tips: try commands like "air guitar" or "kiss the camera" or "do the worm" or "macarena dance.")
Sometimes micromanagement just isn't good enough. At Pointless, we've applied the incredible power of nanotechnology to our business practice by phasing out old-fashioned micromanagement and replacing it with NANO-MANAGEMENT. We've even developed a software tool to make this possible, our new Nano-management Master--now available for licensing (complete with employee implants!).
With Nano-management Master, enlightened management can do what even the most skilled micromanagers could only dream of. We can monitor every syllable spoken, every keystroke made, and even every thought of every employee! And we can demand and receive progress reports every 15 seconds or less! Got some troublesome employees who are trying to drive their projects too fast or make uncomfortable "change" in the organization? Nano-management Master can slow them to a halt and even drive them right out of your corporation--voluntarily!
With all the recent hype over nanotechnology, we at Pointless knew that nanotech was for us. This is one more bandwagon we're proud to be on.
New Policies to Save Computer Energy!
Pointless, Inc. is now saving the environment and our costs by reducing computer energy. While other companies encourage computer users to turn off the computer every night to save energy, we require our users to turn computers off at least 10 times a day. Our employees shut down their computers during every break, every meeting, every time they walk out of the office or answer the phone or read a memo and don't need the computer. Our accountants estimate that this will save at least $3 per employee per month in energy, adding big bucks to our bottom line. Once again, Pointless accountants are making a difference and establishing a best practice for other companies to benchmark!
We power down all day long!
Pointless taps the power of American Idol!
Pointless, Inc. proudly brings the best of American Idol to Corporate America! Millions have marveled at the success of American Idol. Now its secret of success can become yours! We watched this secret transform our Corporation at Pointless, and with our help, it is already transforming dozens of other companies. The secret? World-class performance reviews as taught by none-other than Pointless' own new V.P. of Performance Evaluation, Simon Cowell. Now you can bring Simon and his team of trainers to your corporation, where he will lead you in workshops on Total Honesty Evaluations and Tough Love Motivation.
"My performance evaluation is what made a star out of the pathetically untalented William Hung. Now I'm going to make stars out of your own pathetically untalented employees." Simon is right! Face it, if most of your employees were transported back to Old Testament times, they would been stoned for laziness, greed, and constant whining. They've got less brains than a bean burrito, and all the talent of a housefly, but more annoying. How can they ever improve if someone doesn't tell it like it is? Simon says you need to learn his secrets now.
Turn your employees into superstars with our very own Simon Cowell's "Corporate American Idol" program for high-powered performance evaluations!
Contrary to popular touchy-feely quack theories about the need to "nurture" and "respect" employees and treat them "like human-beings," Simon's "Devastating Honesty" program has been a proven success! Companies that have implemented Simon's program have received incredibly positive feedback, like these actual comments from employees:
"I never had so much fun! I used to dread performance reviews, but now I look forward to giving them."
"Being a manager never felt so good!"
"After just one week, Simon's program is already helping our people! We had one employee who was struggling with a lack of confidence in her work. She was in tears after my Simon Cowell-style performance evaluation, but she called me later to thank me for my hard-hitting comments. She said that without my help, she said she would never have had the courage to quit."
Coming soon: A Pointless workshop for employees with children and pets. "Tough Love for Teenagers and Dogs: The Simon Cowell Touch". (Sorry, not even Simon's full-strength program can do anything for Paula Abdul's dog.)
[Webmaster's note: Microsoft Word's spellchecker wants to replace "Cowell" with cowbell. Is there any significance to that?]
Pointless taps the power of Feng Shui!
While employees with bad energy flow out, positive energy flows into the halls of Pointless, thanks to Feng Shui remodeling at all our facilities. Our new Vice President of Feng Shui Implementation, Loo-Sing Dou (formerly Bubba Roberts), has energized cubicles and executive offices alike using the principles of the three inner harmonies, the seven spheres of thought, and the two gongs of Kash-kau. Plus he has installed ba-qua mirrors above every cubicle to enhance the flow of "chi" energy - and to help us keep an eye on people. In some cases, he found better energy flows by filling a cubicle with potted bamboo rather than a live employee - resulting in better cash flow as well. And you'll love what we've done with our executive offices, now bigger than ever to allow more positive energy flows with forest-like settings, waterfalls, and a small mammal or two.
Tax Law Breakthrough: Don't Fire Employees - Donate Them!
For years major corporations have received huge tax breaks by donating property like patents or land to non-profit organizations. Now Pointless, Inc. has cleared a new trail in the jungle of tax law by successfully DONATING EMPLOYEES to the Peace Corps rather than merely firing them, generating huge tax deductions. We reap the savings of no longer having to pay a salary, while ALSO getting a sizeable tax credit for the market value of the employee. It's all made possible by carefully crafted non-compete agreements that we require all employees to sign. The fine print of these nebulous documents essentially states that the employee's minds ("and all attachments thereto" - i.e., their bodies) are property of the Corporation. We then strengthen our position with statements directly from the employees - gleaned from employee e-mail, chat room visits, and "private" discussions picked up with hidden listening devices - that describe how they are in fact treated like property. And then we establish their market value by asking them how much they think they are worth, which often proves to be as much as 50 times what we are paying them. We take the tax credit on the employee's own stated market value, giving a tax credit that typically is much larger than what we were paying them. We're talking MEGABUCKS!
We began this practice by donating a dozen disgruntled employees to the Peace Corps, which desperately needed these individuals for humanitarian service in Iran. Now that the IRS has recognized their non-profit status of Human Shields for Peace, we'll be making additional donations right away to that fine organization. We understand that our donations will be strapped to the Eiffel Tower to help prevent Phase Two of the bombing campaign in current war. We salute the brave former employees and soon-to-be-former-employees of Pointless for their contributions to world peace (and to our bottom line). This is just one more way that being socially responsible brings surprising returns. That's what being a good citizen is all about!
Anthony Robbins Firewalk: Insurance Update
Pointless, Inc. was thrilled to bring its employees the latest in personal empowerment and total Neuro-Associative Conditioning in our recent Anthony Robbins seminar, complete with the soul-building Firewalk for Personal Empowerment and Inner Healing. Unfortunately, a few of you lacked the courage to complete the exercise properly, so a higher than average rate of outer healing is now going on. Burns below the knee are now excluded from coverage by our insurance provider, Untied Health. Also, during the Project Personal Victory training where we all learned to "unleash the power within" by jumping and shouting repeatedly as if we had won a world championship, a number of us suffered from injuries to vocal chords and knees, which have also been excluded from coverage as an important cost cutting step, keeping our health insurance affordable for all of us. Finally, for those of you who became ill after ingesting large quantities of Mr. Robbins' green health elixirs, please note that your policy excludes "self-inflicted poisoning." But, if the brew actually does cure cancer and everything else, you won't be needing insurance anyway.
In spite of a few setbacks, the Anthony Robbins seminar was a major success for Pointless, allowing Wall Street analysts to better appreciate our commitment to state-of-the-art trends. We can't wait to run the seminar again next year.
New Software Product: Outsourcing Genie®
Pointless is proud to introduce the employee management software suite, Outsourcing Genie®, now featuring Offshore Master 2.0 to help you offshore any employee you don't like, or who costs too much, or who has the audacity to get over 50 years of age. Offshore Master 2.0 automatically identifies qualified offshore employees willing to work for the arbitrarily low wages you specify. Want a patent lawyer for $10 a day? Done! Need a Unix programmer for 20 cents an hour? Done! Want a CEO for less than $10,000 a day? Sorry--you can't do that. At least not with us. And we certainly don't recommend that vile competitor, that despicable executive off-shoring firm, Off the Top, Inc., which threatens the stability of Corporate America as we know it by offshoring top executives.
Cost Cutting Update
Years ago our CEO, David J. Huffenpuff, revolutionized the business world with his breakthrough advance known as the Huffenpuff Two-Step Plan: 1) Spend Less, and 2) Repeat Step 1. While the slow economy and numerous other factors often makes it hard to sell more, we are world leaders in spending less, and are actively cost-cutting our way to incredible profits, which we expect to see any quarter now.
This week CEO David J. Huffenpuff presented a special award (a low-cost aluminum medallion) to our Office Services Department, who led a massive cost-cutting initiative by selling off all our photocopiers, savings tens of thousands of dollars in capital costs, toner and ink costs, paper costs, repair costs, etc. We appear to be the first company to successfully implement dramatic cost savings in this area! When copies of documents are needed - and ONLY if they are TRULY needed - employees now copy originals by hand. Not only does this force employees to be more selective about which documents they prepare and keep, but it's also led to improved handwriting skills through daily practice.
In the award ceremony, CEO Huffenpuff also awarded members of the Computer Services Department, which is instituting a major cost-savings initiative from the CEO himself, the elimination of nearly all computers, including monitors, printers, and other expensive devices. This will save hundreds of thousands of dollars that were previously spent on equipment that becomes obsolete immediately and crashes continually due to buggy software. Plus we've had a lot of expensive computer failures due to ice accumulation in the winter due ever since we stopped indoor heating as part of our cost cutting program. Instead of wasting money on computers, Pointless employees will build on their photocopy cost-savings initiative by preparing their original documents and spreadsheets by hand. The elimination of computers and printers from cubicles also frees up a lot of space, allowing more employees to fit into a single cubicle, so we can have more office space available for next year's Executive Suites expansion and our planned Executive Hot Tub Room. Plus with more employees per cubicle, the extra body heat will certainly help in winter!
Following the award ceremony, further dramatic cost savings were achieved by eliminating the Office Services Department and the Computer Services Department.
Pointless Intellectual Property
While we usually ignore patents (who needs them?), Pointless is still proud to announce that we have filed a BUSINESS METHOD PATENT for our revolutionary way of making unprecedented profits. We expect our patent to be granted any day now. In fairness to our competitors, we want you to be prepared for this so you can start paying us royalties ASAP. Our patent application has the title, "Method of Making Profits by Elevational Pricing Strategies," and Claim 1 reads as follows:
A method of making profits from selling a service or product, comprising the steps of (1) estimating the cost to the provider of the service of product, (2) establishing a predetermined price to be charged to a purchaser of said product or service, (3) providing said service or product to said purchaser, and (4) charging said predetermined price to said purchaser, wherein said predetermine price is a whole lot more than said estimated cost.
Like many state-of-the-art companies, we've completely outsourced our Legal department. For our intellectual property needs, we use a respected invention marketing firm that we learned about while watching cable TV ads late one night. We submitted some of our CEO's ideas to the firm, and were amazed that they were able to complete an extensive market and patentability analysis in just a few days, revealing that our CEO's ideas were highly marketable - potentially worth billions of dollars!! - and that they were completely novel and patentable! They have helped us to file cleverly written patent applications in the US, carefully drafted by their team of legal experts in India. All that for less than the cost of a team building retreat to Maui!
We've got a lot more intellectual property in the works. Just you wait! But here's one hint: the next time your customer service department makes a complaining customer feel stupid by saying that no one has ever had that problem before, you're going to owe us a royalty!
Corporate Reduction in Acronyms Program
Just this week, David J. Huffenpuff, CEO and CIO (Chief Inspirational Officer) revealed a new GMP/QFD concept for ERP-based SPC/IT/APO systems that will surely increase ROI at P.I.: the new Corporate Reduction in Acronyms Program. CEO Huffenpuff recognizes that acronyms are a sign of excellence, yet feels more restraint is needed to improve communication. Thus, acronym use will be limited in Corporate documents to a handful (about 2,000) of approved acronyms printed on a Corporate Reduction in Acronyms Program sheet.
Pardon our growth!
Due to the truly amazing response of our customers this year, we've had some unexpected growing pains. Faced with overwhelming customer demands, we've had to relocate several times and change our phone listing to an unpublished number. We've also gone through extensive re-engineering of our corporation and regular "right-sizing" to ensure that corporate resources are optimally poised to ensure customer delight. We regret having to lay off most of our staff, but it was done to increase our productivity and ensure a healthy and vigorous future as we embrace a dynamic, global economy. We've reduced our workforce by 90%, representing a TENFOLD increase in productivity, something rarely achieved in larger, less flexible corporations. Our future now looks extremely bright, and the analysts on Wall Street are euphoric. But the skyrocketing growth in our productivity isn't over! Soon we're going to outplace nearly everybody, resulting in one of the most dramatic surges in corporate productivity ever seen. (But even with the need for constant outplacement, we'll continue our trend of adding more chief officers with state-of-the-art titles, like Chief Knowledge Officer, Chief Outsourcing Officer, Chief Diversity Officer, and Chief Officer of Title Elimination.) Overall, the future has never looked so good, in spite of a few growing pains.
Recently some skeptics asked how we can reach our goals for growth while outplacing most of our staff. It's simple. We're not eliminating results, just eliminating costs with proper outsourcing. In-house services are expensive and inflexible. At Pointless, in-house attorneys, in-house engineers, in-house marketers, and in-house secretaries have all been outsourced, allowing us to use out-house attorneys, out-house engineers, out-house marketers, and so forth. Pointless, Inc., like many other leaders of Corporate America, is transforming from an in-house corporation to an out-house corporation. Naturally, the sweet smell of success attends us as we focus on the bottom line! To get a glimpse at our bright future, just read the most recent speech by our Chairman and Founder, David J. Huffenpuff.
Pointless Offices Opened Again!
With the recent thaw, Pointless offices are about to return to normal operation once again! Like many of our customers, we at Pointless were somewhat frustrated by the unexpected accumulation of snow and ice that blocked access for employees at Pointless offices during January and February. You see, as part of our advanced cost savings program, we sold off our snow blowers and other snow removal
equipment, and canceled costly snow plowing services from the county for access roads, all resulting in many thousands of dollars of savings. While the two-month shut-down due to access trouble was not fully anticipated, we are confident that any decline in productivity was mitigated not only from the cost savings in snow removal, but also from the energy savings by longer needing to heat our buildings. Smart cost savings like that is what keeps Pointless so far removed from the competition!
Curator: Jeff Lindsay (the alter ego of David J. Huffenpuff), Contact: Last Updated: March 20, 2009
URL: "http://www.jefflindsay.com/pointless/new.shtml"
March 2009: Pointless Gets a Bailout!
While employees with bad energy flow out, positive energy flows into the halls of Pointless, thanks to Feng Shui remodeling at all our facilities. Our new Vice President of Feng Shui Implementation, Loo-Sing Dou (formerly Bubba Roberts), has energized cubicles and executive offices alike using the principles of the three inner harmonies, the seven spheres of thought, and the two gongs of Kash-kau. Plus he has installed ba-qua mirrors above every cubicle to enhance the flow of "chi" energy - and to help us keep an eye on people. In some cases, he found better energy flows by filling a cubicle with potted bamboo rather than a live employee - resulting in better cash flow as well. And you'll love what we've done with our executive offices, now bigger than ever to allow more positive energy flows with forest-like settings, waterfalls, and a small mammal or two.
Pointless, Inc. was thrilled to bring its employees the latest in personal empowerment and total Neuro-Associative Conditioning in our recent Anthony Robbins seminar, complete with the soul-building Firewalk for Personal Empowerment and Inner Healing. Unfortunately, a few of you lacked the courage to complete the exercise properly, so a higher than average rate of outer healing is now going on. Burns below the knee are now excluded from coverage by our insurance provider, Untied Health. Also, during the Project Personal Victory training where we all learned to "unleash the power within" by jumping and shouting repeatedly as if we had won a world championship, a number of us suffered from injuries to vocal chords and knees, which have also been excluded from coverage as an important cost cutting step, keeping our health insurance affordable for all of us. Finally, for those of you who became ill after ingesting large quantities of Mr. Robbins' green health elixirs, please note that your policy excludes "self-inflicted poisoning." But, if the brew actually does cure cancer and everything else, you won't be needing insurance anyway.