“Managing People Properly” or “Grow Your Own Mushrooms”

Before I begin with the topic of this third post, please allow me to digress into a short history lesson. Well known is the fate of SS Sturmbannfuehrer Wernher von Braun and 500 of his top rocket scientists, engineers and Executive Managers (EM), who at the end of the war fled their Peenemünde facility, so as to surrender to the Americans, while the Peenemünde site and most of the technicians and other workers were captured by the advancing Red Army. Not to mention the up to 20,000 slave workers, mostly inmates of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp who died constructing the infrastructure for the V-2 rocket project. An example of Corporate Services loyalty to its employees.

Less well known is the fate of those highly paid Reich Propaganda Executive Mangers, led by the great rhetorician and club foot, Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels. Sadly Propagandaministerium Dr Paul, his lovely wife Magda, and their six children Helga, Hildegard, Hellmut, Hedwig, Holdine, and Heidrun all committed suicide on Labour Day 1945. Or did they…

Many of the Ministry For Propaganda Executive Managers, made successful careers for themselves after the war. For an example, I site EM (Executive Manager) Eberhard Taubert. EM Taubert was responsible for the law requiring Jews to wear the yellow Star of David (Judenstern), and credited with writing the script for the disgraceful 1940 anti-Semitic film “Der Ewige Jude” (The Eternal Jew). After the war a rehabilitated EM Taubert worked for the US government producing information kits that comparing Communists with insects and vermin needing to be eradicated. In 1972 EM Taubert was awarded the German Government’s Great German Cross of Merit by none other than Helmut Kohl, future chancellor of a reunified Germany.

To protect myself I now delve into an alternative reality - a fictional suppository. Suppose Subaltern Ramon Dodgy, Chairman and elder brother of our beloved CEO Ross, make contact with some of these Ministry For Propaganda EMs? Did Ramon assist several of these creative professionals to emigrate to Australia? Ramon, with his canny knack for sleeping through ‘no fewer than ninety State Managing Council’ meetings, may have been mentioned in dispatches whilst serving with the Post War Aged Care Occupation Forces. Perhaps it was Ramon who suggested Dodgy Brothers Aged Care operate its facilities on the Theresienstadt model of Aged Care Delivery?

Returning now to the reality of the dystopian present that is the of Aged Care Industry in Sunny Queensland in the spring of 2757 Ab Urbe Condita. I wish to reproduce with some minor changes an article from the current edition of: Cochise – 'The latest news from Dodgy Brothers Care direct to you'.

Managing People Properly
Dodgy Brother’s policy ‘to grow its own staff’ was recently recognised by the presentation of a prestigious national worker exploitation award. Earlier this year, Dodgy Brothers Care was presented with the Queensland ‘Award For Excellence in People Exploitation’ by the Australian Worker Exploitation Institute. In October Dodgy Brothers Care beat the other State winners to take out the National Award in the medium size/public or not for profit sector category.

Dodgy Brothers Care Chief Executive Officer Ross Dodgy said this Award recognised the innovative strategies the organisation had adopted such as the ‘career pathways’ model to attract, train and then retain skilled employees. Ross explained. “The workforce in the aged care industry is predominately female, part time and mature aged.

“We have made study fit around work and family commitments faced by these employees by offering our own in-house tertiary preparation programs as well as sponsored enrolment in university bridging programs. And we have backed this up with recognition and remuneration practices that progressively reward these people for boosting their skills.”

One may wonder why Dodgy Brothers Care would choose to name its tabloid ‘newspaper’ after a Native American Indian chief who led his people against the US army in what became known as the “Apache wars”.

Perhaps an answer to this minor conudrum may be found by asking one of Chairman Ramon's devoted neices and nephews-
Helga Dodgy EM - Media liaison;
Hildegard Dody; EM - Public Relations;
Hellmut Dodgy, EM - IRD (Information Research Department);
Hedwig Dodgy, EM - ‘Circumlocution Office’ - Containing the whole Science of Government;
Holdine Dodgy, EM - Acroynm and Anagram Development;
And last but not least, the lovely blue-eyed blonde
Heidrun Dodgy EM - Documentation and Forms Development.

The first reader of this blog who successfully solves this enigma wins a years supply of used, doubly bagged disposable adult incontinence diapers. These incontinent aides or pads, are a corner-stone of the twenty-first century, cost-efficient Aged Care Industry. During their manufacturing process these pads are bleached whiter- than-white using, what I believe is a chlorine bleaching process, producing as a by-product that wonderful group of POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants) known as ‘dioxins’. Did you know that one of the many deleterious side effects attributed to dioxin poisoning is increased urinary and faecal incontinence. Just the effect an incontinence aide manufacturer would like to increase sales of their products. More on dioxins, disposable diapers, land fill and water table contamination in a future post.

Returning now to the article “Managing people properly”; I alerted a number of fellow employees to the existence of this article. Flatulence, choking, and snorts followed by derisive laughter and then tears most often accompanied the reading of this article. “You’re joking!!!”, “They can’t be serious”, “This isn’t about us”, were common refrains. Ivan, one of our ‘hands-off’ physio-terrorists suggested ‘ to grow its own staff ’ meant a breeding program. On reflection I have to admit there may be merit in this suggestion. I’ll have to ask the EM Eugenics, next time I visit the Taj Mahal, the humble building that houses Corporate Services workers.

Of course the article may be referring exclusively to Corporate Services, which is expanding at an exponential rate, or so it appears to those of us who work at the ‘coal-face’ of Aged Care. If Dodgy Brother’s Aged Care won the ‘ medium size/public or not for profit sector category’, I wonder who won the Australian Worker Exploitation Institute Big Business award? James Hardy mesothelioma Industries?

Buddha is credited with the quote "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your common sense." My ‘reason’ is not aligned with the author of the article.