Running on empty

You know, I’m not unsympathetic to the thousands of employees of the US automakers, or to the employees of suppliers & vendors to the industry. I have friends who work for those companies, & I don’t want to see them hurt by this fiasco.

But you just have to draw the line somewhere, & when one of these companies can issue this recent memo to staff, & think that anyone either inside or outside the company will really believe this codswallop, well—you’ve given up all pretense of being a company run by sentient beings.

Here’s the memo, with some redactions, translations & comments:

The set of messages below might be helpful in your communication efforts.

• The current economic and financial crisis is global and across all industries, [we are] not the only company under intense pressure in this very turbulent environment.

= We're being unfairly picked on. We're only one of hundreds, maybe thousands or millions, of Fortune 1000 companies that made & continue to make boneheaded, greed-based "business" decisions. & the media's focusing on us instead of banks, insurance companies, mortgage lending, the government, etc. You never hear about THEM, do you? It’s not our fault!

• Speculation is increasing and to such an extent that it is becoming difficult to separate facts from myths

= Unfortunately, our complete idiocy is becoming common knowledge & we’re having a hard time figuring out even for ourselves what we did or only thought about doing; much less what we told the outside world.

• The media is focusing heavily on [us] and the automotive industry, for example, regarding program delays, mergers, and a number of other issues that can easily distract us from focusing on our daily work. All of us want to know more. The 'not knowing' adds a lot of stress for all of us.

= Why can’t they just keep the spotlight on the mortgage crisis or the financial institute meltdown? It’s not fair!

• There is not a lot we can say, but please rest assured that [we are] proactively addressing the situation. Our best people are exploring every possible action to stabilize our business. Many of the opportunities that our senior leadership is looking at, are still in the exploratory phase, and it would really not be appropriate to discuss these openly. Also, some of the actions involve material information, and therefore legal and financial guidelines prohibit the company from commenting, both in- and externally.

= We don’t really have any solutions or plans, but we’re working on producing the appearance of thinking about coming up with one or two.
= & don’t say anything to anyone about anything.

• As soon as actions are finalized, we will share the information directly with you

= If it’s absolutely unavoidable.

• Meanwhile, it is of the utmost importance that we remain focussed [sic] on our job and place maximum attention in conserving cash and eliminating waste.

= We certainly don’t want you to stop working like Trojans as though what you do really advances our business non-planning. & we want you to cut back on the company coffee so we can continue to fly our senior management around the world in style.

• We own [sic] [the company] our very best efforts to help the company through this crisis

= We want you to be confident in our abilities, because after all—we’re rich & you’re not, so we MUST be smarter than you.

• [We] will emerge [sic—evidently they haven’t even planned far enough ahead to know how/where/when/what they’ll emerge

= If we can persuade Congress to fork over more money to keep the company going until our retirement packages kick in.

• Your hard work and dedication is very much appreciated.

= We’re hoping that after a while, you & everyone else will forget that we said we were going to come up with solutions; & then we’ll retire, so it won’t matter.

I mean, honestly—they must really think the world is populated with nothing but rutabagas.