Wow, this thread got popular. People seem to find these, I dunno, therapeutic. I'll do another one, again purloined from my journal, where I got more than I bargained for:
Years ago, my employer (AKA Megapharma) announced a story contest. The rules were simple: make a 90-second video where you tell a personal experience you’ve had with MegaPharma that impacted/shaped/changed your life. Basically, give the company the testimonial equivalent of a Dutch Rudder (look it up, although NSFW).
Ten or so “winners” would get 250 MegaBucks (a MegaPharma incentive pseudocurrency, valued roughly a dollar apiece for use in a corporate prize catalog containing only one useful thing: pre-loaded debit cards). More importantly, you would receive the opportunity to have your story professionally recorded and sent wide for the greater glorification of the company.
Naturally, no one bothered to try. Seriously, no one; I later learned the judges only received six entries for ten spots.
Rather than taking the hint and scrapping the whole thing, the corporate overlords upped the ante significantly and tried again: same rules as before, but now six thousand MegaBucks to each winner.
Suddenly, everyone cared about sharing their passion for MegaPharma. Submissions flooded in. And I was among those willing to put their dignity aside in exchange for that sweet, sweet paper.
Problem was, I didn’t have many nice things to say about MegaPharma. To quote one of my personal journals from this period: “I’m attached to this company about as tightly as a whore is to the obese businessman banging her.”
So… how to go about making a submission under these dire conditions? I postponed doing it, then forgot, remembered, made a note and forgot again. Finally, I realized that the deadline was due that day, and was only about 30 minutes away. I was still no closer to having a usable, articulate story idea.
But for $6,000, I was sure as shit going to try. I went into the lab, far away from the prying eyes of my co-workers. Then I closed my eyes and thought for about five minutes until an idea popped into my head. Slowly, I mentally put a pitch together. At this point, I only had about five minutes to record the video and upload it, so there was only time for one take.
Here was the guts of my 90-second submission, paraphrased, as to how MegaPharma ignited my passion for healthcare:
“During college, I never really considered becoming a scientist. However, during my final year, shortly before graduation, I received a disturbing call: my uncle, a seasoned military veteran, had been traveling through remote Washington State on leave, when he was targeted by/ran afoul of local law enforcement. After a violent manhunt, my uncle was apprehended, but only after his (former) superior officer broke a dangerous standoff. Only then was my dear uncle was able to get the treatment he needed. Hearing how terribly he’d suffered from the ravages of his mental condition galvanized me then and there to become a scientist.
I continued: “Five or ten years later, I’m finishing my scientific training and looking for a job. During a family reunion, I mentioned that I’m considering working for a company named MegaPharma. The same uncle, now retired from the military, jumps at the name. ‘I know that company!’ he said excitedly. ‘They make the meds I take.’ It was fate then, that I should have the opportunity - nay, privilege - to work for a company that has done SO MUCH for my family.”
And, that, I concluded, is why I am SO PROUD to work for MegaPharma, where I can continue to Make MegaPharma Great Again (I might have actually said that last bit). I put a little quiver in my voice, blinked hard, as though I was holding back tears, and stopped recording. I threw up a little in my mouth, then I uploaded the video and forgot about it.
Sharp readers may note that the plight of my uncle and the protagonist of the critically acclaimed 1982 hit Rambo: First Blood are nearly identical. This is entirely coincidental, I assure you.
A couple weeks later I get an email from MegaPharma’s PR flacks. Although they received more than 300 submissions, they just LOVE the passion in my story and are seriously considering selecting it as one of the grand prize winners.
There was, they wrote, just one little question: what was the MegaPharma medicine that my uncle received for his unspecified disease?
It was a reasonable question, seeing as MegaPharma hadn’t really been making psychiatric or neurological drugs back then. But there must be some reasonable explanation for my 100% true, real-life story ripped from the tears of my heart. So I did a little digging. As luck would have it, MegaPharma used to distribute another company’s psychiatric drug in Asia and the Middle East. I wrote back, explaining that, after his convalescence, my uncle re-joined the military and was deployed to the jungles of southeast Asia as part of an elite special forces unit. During this harrowing time overseas, MegaPharma was his only link to his precious meds during his adventures in service of our country. As I put it win my response, the drugs helped keep my uncle “in fighting shape.”
On a completely unrelated note, the plot of Rambo: First Blood Part Two involves a traumatized veteran returning to the jungles of SE Asia to rescue American POWs. Hell of a film, people.
This explanation appeared to fly with leadership, as I was swiftly notified that I was in. Now all I had to do was tell this harrowing story of sacrifice and triumph. On camera and to a live audience.
I badly underestimated how seriously MegaPharma was taking this circle-jerk. My first inkling of this was when they informed us (during a “kick-off” teleconference) that they’d hired speaking coaches for the presenters.
Also, during this teleconference, I made a fairly major fuck-up: The head speaking coach was giving us guidelines for our talks. I had my speaker on mute and things were going totally average. When we moved to the question period at the end, I made the mistake of un-muting my phone in anticipation of hanging up. Someone asked a question about planning the length of the talk. “Shorter is better,” one of the coaches advised. “Besides, it can get longer in the moment. And if you can fit in eight [minutes], you can definitely fit in ten.”
As a big fan of The Office, it was too much. “That’s what she said!” I blurted out. Technically, it was three TWSS’s in a row, but I didn’t care to elaborate, as it would have meant admitting to making the comment. Instead, I re-muted and prayed the technology to identify me did not exist (or would not be employed).
On the party line, I heard at least two partially-muffled snorts of laughter and dead silence from a dozen prudes/muted lines. An uncomfortable silence ensued, before the conversation was revived and wrapped up.
Anyway, I managed to slip the blame and we moved into the one-on-one coaching phase. Now, I am pretty comfortable giving talks to large groups of people. I've done large talks for science, recorded pieces for various media outlets, and done interviews throughout my life. I know how to talk to people.
Or at least I thought I did. The coaching was mainly aimed at making sure that we were - ahem - very complimentary to MegaPharma. My coach kept trying to shoehorn our our enumerated corporate virtues into the talk, and have my finishing move be spotlighting one of them. For example, my story could be chalked up to “Patient Focus”, when in actuality the main part of the patient MegaPharma cares about seems to be the leathery, cash-storing appendage carried adjacent to the buttocks.
For reasons that should be obvious, I fashioned a talk that bore absolutely no resemblance to my original submission. Far be it from my character to hog the spotlight - the talk I fashioned was, to be blunt, soporific. Huge words, deliberate droning, no real point. My coach hated me. I didn’t give a shit; I just wanted the money and to be forgotten.
I showed up for the taping. Day One was rehearsals. It was shocking how much money they’d wasted on this thing. They had literally built a television studio in one of their cavernous meeting rooms. MegaPharma had also hired a professional stage crew, camera- and sound guys, a few teamsters, a director (and a fucking ASSISTANT DIRECTOR) for what were basically a series of commercials. Add to this a still photographer, caterers (and a security guy who guarded the catering table, mainly from the teamsters) and a make-up team, not to mention travel costs and paying the speakers and their coaches, and MegaPharma was blowing at least a quarter mil on this boondoggle. I’ve said it before, but this is part of the reason your drugs are so expensive. Not the sole reason, but part of it.
The night before the talks, there was a dinner with senior management. There were speeches, during which on exec referred to us as “culture warriors.” I threw up in my mouth again, then self-medicated with an expensive white wine.
Performance day arrived. Like any television show, there was a lot of down time. As I chatted with the other speakers - all MegaPharma employees - I learned something surprising: all of them were completely ignorant of how we made drugs. Everyone was part of our bloated management structure, salespeople, rule-checkers, human resource drones, or the vast network of pseudo-business titles, most of whom were completely fungible and made more money than me. The research part was the tip of the iceberg, a shiny bit visible above the surface, dragged down by a surfeit of bureaucracy.
I don’t want to drag innocents into this story, but the other people presenting spanned that narrow chasm between bland and terrible. There was a veteran salesman (who was still at the absolute bottom of the food chain after working at MegaPharma for 30-40 years - that’s the story I wanted to hear from this dude) who told irrelevant stories of the good ol’ days (like a poor man’s Mad Men). Another woman’s story was essentially how she wasn’t fired by MegaPharma after being a terrible saleswoman and how much she appreciated not being fired now that she’s advanced to being just average. Another expressed gratitude that MegaPharma makes cancer drugs, as she might one day develop cancer. Profound stuff, people.
But I can’t throw stones. My own talk sucked. Midway through, I had one of those existential moments where I could see myself and what I was doing, what I’d been reduced to, and I did not what I saw or how I felt. Because this situation was all kinds of fucked up.
But reality moves slower than dreams, and four or five months later I’m still working there and they’re rolling out the talks. I never watched mine (any of them), to be honest. It felt vaguely degrading in the moment, hailing MegaPharma, and I didn’t want to risk triggering another spell of work-related depression.
Despite my carefully-crafted blandness, my talk was wildly successful, to say the least. I don’t want to give too many details, but it was picked up as part of a major advertising campaign. If you watch a lot of sports, there’s a decent chance you’ve seen snippets of me in a company commercial. Not that I saw an extra dime from it. Then again, I got my gift cards, so I guess I don’t have much room to complain.
Looking back, I view it as a transaction - we both got what we wanted. And if MegaPharma ever wants to play soap-up-storytime again, I’m sure they’d love hearing about my uncle Murphy, a wounded Detroit police officer who was able to return to duty after being practically raised from the dead by some futuristic medical devices that MegaPharma just happens to manufacture.
I have no doubt that MegaPharma might buy that for a dollar.