If you can't beat em, go on monster.com.

Corporate training videos are the greatest invention of modern time.

If not for these cinematic gems, millions of high school kids would be incapable of selling you a 4 year service plan on your DVD player.

More importantly, they are the best source of unintentional comedy this side of Dog: The Bounty Hunter.

(I'm gonna go on a slight tangent here but don't worry it will all come back full circle.

Dog: The Bounty Hunter is, ironically, the crystal meth of television.

Nobody ever intends to get hooked on Dog: The Bounty Hunter. One day, you're at someone's house and someone is watching Dog: The Bounty Hunter. You sit down and you say "what the hell I'll watch it for a minute, what's the worst thing that can happen?" Next thing you know you're hooked. Now you're not just watching DTBH, you're Tivoing DTBH. You're obviously hiding your DTBH addiction from your friends, family, and co-workers because you're afraid of what they might think. As much as you try to hold it together and be a recreational DTBH viewer, eventually it begins to become a major part of your life.

You start using the word "Brah" in casual conversations. You talk to your friends about "turning a page in their life" Your neighbor borrows a power tool and doesn't give it back for three months, but you still loan it to him again the next time because you're convinced he's "a good guy and wants to make a change." Do you want know why Dog: The Bounty Hunter captivates us so? It's a show based on people of the same intellectual level these corporate training videos are aimed at. Now if that's not wrapped in a pretty little package slap my face and call me Sally.)

They are beautifully paradoxical, first they wax poetic as to how an employee who uses the following procedures will be wildly successful, then they proceed to explain the procedures as if the people the video was intended for function only slightly above someone with a severe learning disability.

I work for a very large company, and like most very large companies they use a cookie-cutter approach to employee training. Translation: "Let's hand out jobs like halloween candy, then mold the impressionable idiots into robots while hoping we can get enough production out of the overachievers to justify hiring them even though they're going to realize that they're really not that desperate for a job, get sick of our bullshit and quit in a year."

As a result of this philosophy, we are treated to a steady stream of the aforementiong training videos. So there I sit today, anxiously awaiting the latest corporate video treat like I haven't figured out yet that Soylent Green is people.

If Mystery Science Theatre 3000 had access to these things they would still be on the air and the producers would be using Emmy's as hood ornaments.

An actual line from the video:

"Now that you have the customer in front of you, log on to (data entry system) and click "yes" in response to the "Is the customer present?" question."

Are you serious?

Ok, now I'm not rich by any means but for a punk kid fresh out of college, I'm well above par on the pay scale which makes me wonder... Who are they hiring for this job that this needs to be explained? I would think this problem could be solved by a few slight modifications to the application:


In the following section please circle either Yes or No and provide addition information as prompted:

In the past five years have you committed a felony? Yes No
If you answered "Yes" to the above question, please explain:

In the past five years have you committed a misdemeanor (other than traffic related offenses)? Yes No
If you answered "Yes" to the above question, please explain:

In the past five years have you ever fucked up a glass of water? Yes No

Let's be honest. Employers do not want intelligence. Intelligence leads to opinions and things like independent thought. That shit is the syringe on the beach of corporate America. Unless you're interviewing for a CEO spot they're really not looking for the kid who graduated at the top of his class and wants to change the world.

They're looking for the kid who started smoking because that cartoon camel played pool like a madman.

Today's lesson: Surgeron General's Warning: Free thought may be hazardous to your career.