Richard Niedermaier was finally making waves at the Fortune 500 company at which he worked. After years of hard work and personal sacrifice, he was recently named Vice President of Acquisitions, which meant he now had the full authority to run the department however he saw fit. And after a thorough and careful look into the day-to-day operations of the Acquisitions team, he realized that many people had simply been coasting for years and were either unable or unwilling to perform to their full potential. It was that same invasive mentality among the team that led to a recent dip in the department’s performance.
Niedermaier knew that was the first area on which to focus his efforts. He had read dozens of books related to effective managerial techniques and strategies for motivating employees to perform better in their respective positions. He read all about trust-building exercises, weekend retreats and incentive-based goals within the workplace that, in his experience, had always been met with enthusiasm and significant improvement.
But lucky for Niedermaier, his company had recently invested in a secret incineration chamber, and it was much more cost-effective to simply eliminate the employees and start all over with a fresh, wide-eyed group of hungry go-getters straight out of college.
Leading his soon-to-be-former employees (who were under the impression that being blindly led somewhere was all part of a team-building exercise) to their ultimate demise in the building’s basement, where they would be instantly vaporized in a tank that would be blasted with flames reaching up to 5,000°F, Niedermaier knew he was destined for even bigger and better things, as this was just the beginning of a continued ascent to the top of the corporate world.
