Today I was induced into MegaCorp! A bit like being “made up” in the Mafia I would imagine. Only without being shot in the head.
They run regular induction courses for “new starters” and this was the nearest to my start date, despite being almost 4 weeks after the event. Hey, don’t knock it, it took 6 months for me to get booked on an induction at my…ahem…previous employer.
This induction was held at the Gattaca-style centre in “a recently developed part of the former industrial centre of London’s docklands” – you know. This building is so blatantly corporate and opulent that I always feel slightly uncomfortable milling about inside. The high number of high-visability, highly-strung security people, coupled with the huge number of bewildered visitors really gives the lobby a Gilliamesque surreality that does my fucking head in. The little voice eminating from the back of my cranium starts to remind me that “I DON’T BELONG HERE”…despite owning the necessary MegaCorp ID card required to gain entry. Being the only long-haired jeans-wearing scruff bag in the entire joint simplified my progress, mainly because the security people could instantly deduce that I was here for the induction so I was able to traverse the huge, marble-lined atriums, expensively decorated corridors and tons of superfluous glass, with ease.
What would you imagine the induction to be like for such a vast multinational corporation ? You’re so right. Here are a few of the highlights:

• The Powerpoint-failure ballet was shortened as a result of the auditorium having its own PC installed. It still added an extra 10 minutes to the proceedings, but any regular conference-goer will be with me when I describe this as orgasmically short.
• The expensive video projection system did get bollocksed-up enough for me to nearly embarrass myself. We were treated to the inspirational, introductory music to “The History of MegaCorp” five or six times; sometimes without the visuals, sometimes with some Windows graphics but only finally with the correct footage. Even then, half the voices were silent owing to creative stereo sound editing combined with a broken right channel. The climax of the film consisted of the current CEO, let’s call him “Wayne King”, delivering a terribly inspirational speech only to be halted by a horribly debilitating desease that froze him with some hideous blocky facial deformity. The key conference geezer used this paralysingly long time to faf about and announce that this was the end of the film anyway.
• We learned about the new glorious 5 year^H^H^H^Hpoint plan that will ensure we achieve our mission statement: to become the most powerful organisation in de whole vorld!!!! Muwahahahahahah etc
• We learned about the diversity of the company. In fact this was surprisingly well thought out and interesting, despite a considerably embarrassing excercise where we all had to ask ourselves where the listed scenarios were “acceptable” or “unacceptable”. They were things like:
  

  “A workmate often spends his time on the Internet looking up websites about raping and murdering woman.Occasionally he wears their skins into work and masturbates over the office plants.”.

  On the other hand, considering some of the scum that Megacorp attracts (cough…traders…) this may not be patronising after all…

• We had coffee and tea…and I didn’t speak to anyone. Instead I simply stared into a previously unobserved piece of open space.
• Other things

Despite all of this negativity, now that I have stuff to do I’m enjoying the work. The people I deal with are sound (despite some earnest to the point of being called “Ernie”) and my immediate colleages are not only nice and techincal, they hate Windows too! Cool!