[Corporate Fat Cat Secret Meeting in Progress. Do Not Disturb]

The flyer pictured above was posted on the door. I opened the door and stumbled into the dimly lit room. As my eyes adjusted I saw a twenty or thirty people all facing a villain looking guy on stage. He was talking about gold bracelets and mind control. I tried to ignore him while my eyes searched for free samples. There weren’t any. A couple of big guys with pinky rings closed the door behind me so I was stuck listening to his entire spiel.

The talk actually wasn’t so bad, but again, I was delirious from hunger. He was captivating with his over the top evil sounding voice and sharp claws. It was like he ate a bunch of cat litter right before giving his speech. That’s how gravelly his voice was. I managed to snap a picture of him. They almost caught me because I turned to take a selfie with him in the background and then one of me doing the duck face. Luckily, I played it off by saying how much I value unchecked capitalism. With that they knew I was one of them. Anyway, here’s the picture of him.

This guy just looks like he’s no good. I always say you should kind of judge a book by the cover, so I started recording everything he said. He didn’t say anything important before I started recording. I actually had to delete some of the transcript because he was just making small talk, trying to appear like ‘one of the guys.’ Ugh. I hate when fat cats try to pretend like they’re just one of the guys.

For simplicity sake anything said by the villain looking main guy is in regular type. Audience members speaking parts are italicized. I didn’t need to italicize the word italicize but it just looks wrong if you don’t italicize it.

Moving on.

Cat villain bad guy: Okay everyone. (See? Regular type) Thanks for coming to this very important meeting. You’re probably wondering why I’ve called you all in here. We have a problem. Our employees don’t actually need us like they think they do.

For years society as a whole has had to do everything it could just to survive. People worked long hours for low pay because they had no other option. It was a great time to be us. There’s too much information out there these days and anyone willing to put in the work can better their own situation.

As you know, the quality of life in the U.S. and abroad is better than it ever has been. The poor of today enjoy luxuries that the richest kings of before didn’t have access to. As such, many of our employees are able to get their basic needs met. If people just focused on living below their means they would soon find they have no need to come back to us to earn another paycheck. They don’t know it, but our employees have the power if they could just learn to get out of their own way.

Audience member eating an horderve: Yeah, that’s great! [Dammit, there was food. Also, see? Italicized]

CVBG: No. That’s not great. (See? Back to fat cat guy. You get the idea) It’s not great because if our employees don’t need money from us, they stop being our employees. If our employees stop being employees then our profits plummet. Cigars and fancy whisker creams don’t buy themselves, so it’s important for my personal well being that we keep a strong workforce.

Different audience member: Can we just pay them less?

CVBG: Yes. We will for sure do that. But we need to do more. Starting next quarter we are rolling out our exclusive GOLD MEMBER BRACELET CLUB.  Here’s how it’s going to work:

Employees will be given the ‘opportunity’ to join a very exclusive club- the Gold Member Bracelet Club. In order to be part of this club they’ll have to pay an exorbitant entrance fee. Once they’re part of the club they’ll be able to buy one of our ultra-exclusive gold bracelets. The bracelets themselves are actually made of bronze, but the bracelet doesn’t matter. The status of having the bracelet is what matters. It’s shiny enough that nobody will really care that it’s not real gold. As long as they can pretend it’s real gold, that’s all they’ll care about.

Now, listen closely. This is how we’ll keep our employees perpetually in debt so they have no choice but to continue to be our employees. We’ll constantly roll out new bracelets with minor tweaks. We’ll endorse celebrities to wear the latest version and put it out there that anyone wearing the old version is somehow less than anyone wearing the newest bracelet.

Audience member in a green hat: So…We’re going to create a worthless trinket and charge our employees a fee just for the ability to buy the trinket that we’ll constantly change so they never feel like they have the latest one?

CVBG: Yes. [The fat cat’s eyes grew large as he twiddled his fingers together so his claws scraped against his other claws.]

Audience member next to the guy in a green hat: How will we convince them they need to be part of the club when they can just not join the club and be free from us in a few years?

CVBG: We’ll come up with a slogan. “Life is short…Buy today!” We’ll drill it into their heads that happiness comes from having status and status comes from having things. Not just things, but the latest and greatest things. The more exclusive, the better.  We’ll be rich because the general public can’t stand to wait until tomorrow to spend what they haven’t earned today.

Generic audience member: Where can we buy one?

Different audience member: Yeah, I want one too!

[With that the entire crowd started excitedly talking amongst themselves about who would have the better gold bracelet. The fat cat watched in bewilderment.]

CVBG: What? No. Guys, stop. The bracelets aren’t for you, they’re for your employees so you can control them. They aren’t valuable. They only exist so that we can control them and keep them working for us, indefinitely. [The fat cat then did the evil snarl and twiddled his claws again but it didn’t have the same effect on account of him just doing it. He realized he’d overplayed that gesture and moved on.]

Me: How is this going to make them happier? [I asked this as I made my way over to the free samples]

CVBG: It’s not. Our goal has never been to make them happier. Our goal is to make them hungrier. Hungrier to work those overtime shifts, those weekends, those holidays. We’ll expand beyond trinkets and sell them on the dream of a bigger house and a newer car. “Only the best drive a Lexus” we’ll say. Who doesn’t want to be the best? We’ll introduce the idea of ‘shopping’ to them. Instead of going to a park where they’ll get free sunshine and exercise they’ll go to crowded plastic jungle where they’ll walk around aimlessly looking for something else to buy. They don’t need anything in particular but we’ll convince them they need some ‘retail therapy’ after the long week of work we just put them through.

Me: Those words already exist. Shopping and retail therapy are already things. [Rude? Maybe. But I was shoving crackers and cheese into my face and had barely started to regain full consciousness so my filter for inappropriate questions was limited.]

CVBG: Yes. But, we have [dramatic pause] The Exclusive. Gold. BRACELET. PROGRAMMM. [He stretched out his arms as he said each word louder than the last. I think he expected us all to erupt in applause after he really emphasized the word ‘program’ but a lot of us were eating the free cheese and crackers at that point.]

Audience member named Philip: But won’t they know the reason they have to keep doing these long work weeks is to pay for all this nonsense?

CVBG: You have mustard on your shirt, but yes. They’d be able to figure it out if they spent much time thinking about it. Luckily, they won’t think about it too hard. They want to be seen as successful, even if their bank account shows they clearly aren’t. Not everyone can be wealthy, but everyone can shop. Everyone can pull out their credit cards and get today what they won’t have to pay for until next month. They’ll be too stressed out about money to even consider the fact that the reason they’re so stressed is because they keep spending all their money. It’s brilliant.

We can tell them they aren’t successful if they aren’t wearing certain brands and being seen at certain clubs. Happiness isn’t being content, happiness is this months gold bracelet. We’ll tell them this is what life is all about.  They won’t even realize we already have the next gold bracelet made and the accompanying ad campaign designed to subtly denigrate the old bracelet.

If our employees ever get a look behind the curtain and see that it’s all worthless trinkets then we lose everything. Give them some cheese to chase and tell them they’re a very special rat.

People like to be told they’re special. Tell them it’s a very big deal to compete in the rat race and most of them will numbly spend their days chasing whatever cheese we set before them. People are simple. They just want to be liked. We’ll tell them this is how they become liked and how they gain respect. This is living.

[a few scattered applause could be heard as the crowd began to head toward the exit]

Thanks for coming to this meeting. Remember, “Life is short…Buy today.”  Muahaha [He did the snarl and finger twiddling thing again. We expected him to stop after a few seconds but he just kept doing it as everyone shuffled out of the room and into the light of day.]

If you enjoyed this article please tell everyone about it otherwise they’ll buy into his gold bracelet program because the sales pitch is convincing even though it’s not a good thing to get sucked into.

Here’s a few more articles that also aren’t funny. You might like to read one of them next:

Redefining Success and Chasing FI- The Boat vs. The Shore

Using Selective Attention to Increase Life Satisfaction

Life is Short- Spend for Today vs. Save for Tomorrow