In Which Eeyore is Slandered by Corporate Sloganeering and We are All Arranged by Color

They do not tolerate workplace gossip at Livingston, Mont.-based PrintingForLess.com.

Which is a good thing, because if they did, somebody would certainly say something hurtful about whoever came up with the system for color-coding employees by their preferred style of communication.

For example, a "red" employee - whose preference for get-to-the-point communication is indicated by a red nameplate on his or her desk - might say, "This is the stupidest idea ever and makes me think they must be doing drugs over in human resources," whereas a "blue" employee, who likes "having all the details and time to process them" would say, "It could be the stupidest idea ever, but I really need to know how they are doing things over at HSN Inc. before I could be certain."

HSN Inc. is the shopping network company where chief executive Mindy Grossman does not need color-coded nameplates to recognize her employees' style of communication. 

She only hires one style of employee and that style is staring at himself in a mirror thinking he has stumbled upon his identical twin. Except when he is stuck in the top of a tree after belatedly discovering that he cannot, in fact, fly. 

Because Grossman can sum up her hiring philosophy like this: "You only hire Tiggers. You don't hire Eeyores."

Grossman does not explain who on the HSN Inc. board of directors has forced her to stock the entire company with nothing but characters from the Hundred Acre Wood, but if it were up to me, Tigger would be low on the list.   As Alan Greenspan might say, enthusiasm is all well and good until somebody gets pushed off the bridge in a bounce of irrational exuberance.   

Grossman seems not to have noticed that it is Eeyore who has to talk Tigger down from the tree.  Or that, as risk management could not fail to notice, the stuffed tiger is a liability.  

Comments

[Audubon Ron]

Whoa, that was interesting.

[Jess]

It's posts like these that keep me coming back.

[Forgotten]

I will not be able to read my kids pooh books to them now without thinking Tigger is a liability. Lol.

I guess I will just have to read them some Poe and call it a day.

[MommyTime]

But seriously, who from the 100 Acre Wood would you pick? I totally agree that an office full of Tiggers would be the epitome of annoying -- exuberance without brains is pretty much a disaster in any workplace. An office full of Eeyores would be completely depressing. One full of Poohs...well, I'm guessing there would be a lot of office parties and snacking. Personally, I might choose a whole office full of Roos. Except for the whole can't dress himself thing, he's pretty clever and practical. Basically, this is a long way of saying that I agree that the HR person may not have picked the right story to stock her office. Then again, I read my kids the opening scene of Hamlet (they wanted a ghost story), and I'm not sure there's anyone much better in there to stock an office either.

[Suburban Kamikaze]

I grant you that Eeyore is not the life of the party. (He's the one who is always standing too close when the life of the party throws up...) But he's uncommonly sensible for a stuffed animal: "Getting Tigger down," said Eeyore, and Not hurting anybody. Keep those two ideas in your head Piglet, and you'll be all right."

Even so, in my forthcoming business self-help manifesto, "What Color Was that Cheese that Somebody Moved?" I will make a case for Gilligan's Island as a hiring template.

SK

[Robert Kuntz]

In that spirit, let me just say "Mary Ann".

[Suburban Kamikaze]

The correct answer is Ginger.

SK