Turn 1 News

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The Company would like to officially congratulate the three employees of the month for the last fiscal quarter. They are a shining beacon of corporate achievement and a model for all other employees. Their pictures will be hung on the wall of glory in the cafeteria and they will each receive a commemorative bottle of Corpra-Cola and a unit of Synergy.

• B. Collins for increasing Happy Bean (R) profits five-fold and revolutionising the rapid delivery of hot-beverages.
• B. Johnson for continued success in aspirational workforce rationalisation programs.
• M. Profit for his in-depth analysis of Pineapple preferences.

Company Fast Track to Success Program Graduates have recently revived corporate faith in the struggling program with rapid delivery of goal completion. Thanks to the Company Fast Track to Success Program Graduates, the Company now has a new mascot (Poley the Polar Bear, featured on the cover of this quarter's Corporate Mascots Quarterly). The Company has also become a market leader in the production of Radioactive Spiders, which have been well received by teenage social outcasts and coporate Securiforcers™ alike ¹⁾. Fast track members have also implemented key advances in the Company infrastructure, greatly improving the company's tube-based memo delivery system while ensuring that safety monitoring devices alert all employees to potential hazards. We also welcome the opening of the first Company casino on the lower floors of building 6 and we encourage all employees to attend after work and aid in the company in its pay-check reclamation scheme. Finally, the Company congratulates the softball team on its recent victories and reminds them that Company image will be harmed if they don't win the finals.

To celebrate these successes the board extend their invitation to Fast Track members to the third annual “Conference on Company Cooperation and Communications in the Corporate Context”. Guest speakers to include Hank Venom, CEO of Global Dynamics Corp., and Helga Von Schnitzelmann, Chancellor of Germany II, as well as a mystery guest.

Attendance is compulsory. Registration fees are $12.99.

The Company's recent expansion into supraterrestrial real estate was a milestone of corporate success and an excellent result for a high-profile project. Spirits were high at Company Mission Control when a transmission revealed that Global Dynamics assets were stripped from the moon with the Company claiming all available territory in series of skilled legal manoeuvres.

The Company is also making great strides in the realm of non-terrestrial advertising. The first-of-its-kind Low Orbit Advertisement Delivery System (B.I.L.L.B.O.A.R.D.) was deployed, advertising such company products as “Humans: Great to Lay Eggs In” and “Come to Earth: We Have Liquid Water” sure to catch the eye of untapped markets.

A Global Dynamics spokesman said: “We are very pleased to be involved in the Company's success. We've initiated construction of a Peace Cannon to celebrate our corporate brethren's recent successes in market potential realisation.”

All staff will now be able to see that the very centre of the moon bears a huge Company logo that is visible from across the globe on clear nights. Equally a gigantic space billboard occasionally floats across the sky, though it faces outward rather than toward the earth.

Onibayashi Systems has thrown down the gauntlet to its international competitors, revealing the latest and greatest iteration of its business hero task force, SUPER ACTION TEAM GO. Armed with costumes more shiny, body-hugging and colour-coded than ever before, they have taken to the streets of Tokyo, fighting the enemies of business, productivity, and occasionally even justice wherever they may lurk.

Onibayashi stock is soaring from the profits of merchandising, tie-in media, and childrens' birthday parties. Viewing figures from the team's latest battle - against a giant alien robot inexplicably also branded with Onibayashi insignia - show that it was seen by over 110% of the target demographic, with front-row seats at the specially-constructed grandstand selling for millions of yen.

Needless to say this cannot go unanswered. Such a marketing campaign poses a severe threat to the Company's brand management strategy. The board has designated as high-profile a project to protect the Company's media presence from Onibayashi Systems by any means necessary.

“It was awesome, I loved all the explosions and inexplicable dinosaurs! The scenes with the handheld camera filming a handheld camera filming the dramatic chase was so inspired! I feel motivated now.”

Media screens across Company HQ are showing a series of Company-related films. Originals such as Moon 2: Company Moon and E.T. The Employee Training Advisor are already widely regarded as classics, and are being re-edited, redubbed and remastered on an hourly basis. Of course all fans were sorry to hear about the delay of Mt Lucas' latest work 'The Perils of Redundancy' after on-set delays.

“News and Chat with Mick and Pat is the best show ever…and they're so handsome”

The Company's in house TV ratings have soared on the Corporate news channel thanks to some ground-breaking, hard-hitting, atom-splitting journalism from the duo of Mick and Pat. Exciting reports on corporate terrorism, terrible mango-based plagues and the benefits of pineapples have captured the imagination of the workforce. Needless to say the company is now keen to expand its media presence to compete with News Incorporated.

Mango futures, a previously highly valued commodity, have collapsed, taking with them the economies of a number of microstates completely dependent on mango exports. Meanwhile, pineapples have replace mangoes as the tropical fruit of choice among investors. The Company's rapid expansion into the pineapple market successfully locked out any competition, further dooming those states who attempted to switch from mango to pineapple production.

A reporter on the ground described the situation in the previously mango-rich countries as “hellish”, with food riots, civil unrest and a rising tide of anti-corporate sentiment. Demand for Company-produced Securiforcers™ is expected to rise.

From the pages of The Financier, a News Incorporated publication.

Faced with a lack of anywhere to put the business artefacts acquired by crusading employees, the company has been forced to repurpose the ground floor toilets of Company HQ into a 'distributed museum-waste co-experience'. In the innovative displays visitors have a chance to get close to such marvels as Durandal, blade of accountancy; the pen which abolished the Geneva convention; the bones of Count Vlad the Embezzler of Transylvania*; and the dossier of adorable cat photos which brought low Heartless Industries in the first corporate war.

The CEO would like to take this opportunity to remind staff that projects are for the good of the company, and failing to undertake them has consequences.

*Count Vlad's skull remains missing, if found please hand in to the Lost and Found office.

Many areas of Company HQ have been infested by a variety of diminutive and vicious creatures. They have huge, bloodshot -and apparently non-functional- eyes, most are suspiciously fluffy, and all are rabid and dangerous, possessing a variety of unusual abilities. Their surprising knack for finding hiding places is playing havoc with productivity, and thus far all attempts to clear them out have failed.

“I know the secret of taming them, and I'm gonna become the greatest Minicreature master in the world!” claims Larry Brook, a schoolboy and specialist consultant hired to help deal with the infestation. Thus far, his tactic of pitting the creatures against one another - their desire to fight seems to outweigh their desire to hide - has been substantially more successful than the flamethrower-centric approach favoured by the Facilities team tasked with exterminating them. Needless say a directive is in place to “Catch them All”.

The Company would like to congratulate several management led initiatives that have opened up new frontiers in employee motivation. The Optimax Workplace Efficiency Initiative has led to record increases in reported employee satisfaction and management compliance quotients. We congratulate those involved and encourage other employees to report to injection room alpha to enrol in the scheme.

Equally we are happy to report the opening of the exciting new “Indiana James and the Raiders of the Stationery Cupboard (Inventory Management)” training film that is now showing in all HR cinemas, the cost of admission is $12.13 and all staff are expected to attend.

Finally HR would like to remind all staff that congregation of large groups of employees violates company regulation 3-T and reduces management-employee interfaced contentment, while posing a security risk. Remember there's no “Team” in “Collective Bargaining Agreement”. No. There. Isn't.

Over the past few weeks all staff will have noticed a huge influx of pale, silent new employees into all departments. Separately many older employees can now often be seen standing around in large groups mouthing silently to each other with glazed over eyes.

PR higher-ups are up in arms about ongoing and as-yet untraced leaking of minor corporate secrets to the world press. Over the past couple of weeks, News Incorporated has been running a daily segment featuring a constant stream of banal employee opinions and comments about upcoming projects from within the Company. Comments about the leaked banter are dominating public conversations about the Company, and distracting from the positive press being churned out by PR.

Management is perplexed how anyone could have bugged all the water coolers without being noticed, and interrogation of Facilities staff is underway.

A new pandemic is sweeping the globe, causing its sufferers to crave blueberry jellybeans to an unhealthy degree and leading to the closing of Madagascar's borders and mass transit system. Meanwhile large sections of Tokyo have been declared 'Mad Max' Zones as a result of Jellybean shortages caused by distribution failures that Global Dynamics Corp. have blamed on unprecedented regulatory complications.

The Company, sole producer of blueberry jellybeans as of the Great Patenting of FY73 has seen soaring profits. Efforts are under way to produce a vaccine against the virus, but a Company official was quoted as saying “There's no rush, it's basically harmless, apart from the jellybean thing” as he ate his way through an entire crate of Company-brand Blueberry Jellybeans™.

Reports are spreading of strange creatures roaming the halls of floor 17. Company psychiatrists are perplexed by the fact that all victims seem to be seeing the same thing: giant polar bears made of ice cream, with chainsaw teeth and viscous cola-breath. Employees encountering the abominations are encouraged to disbelieve their existence and seek medical attention.

An informal betting pool seems to have sprung up around the incident. Current odds favour holograms, followed by mind-affecting drugs.

The Company wishes to remind staff that gambling is forbidden on company property unless the Company gets a 10% cut.

In a recent health and safety notice, employees were reminded that any unusual seismic disturbances or smoke rising form the subbasement of the Legal and Acquisitions Building is perfectly within expected parameters does not require activation of any emergency systems. These are a natural consequence of insufficient innovation within the company, as evidenced by the recent failure of the dragon's lair competition to identify any new forward-looking planning horizons that can be leverage for non-hypotheticated real-world gains.

Staff are encouraged to this resolve this problem post-haste.

The Human Resources department congratulates the R&D department on its recent streamlining. Although it was necessary to bid farewell to some old faces in the department we are confident that the long term gains in efficiency in the “Non-Allergenic Baby Food” and “Artificial Singularities” research groups will greatly benefit the department by freeing up much need resources for important company projects. HR would ask other departments to carefully consider their own overheads, even in these time of mega-profits, since a continued program of employee auditing will be in effect for the foreseeable future.

From the office of Patrick - Executive Director of HR

Greetings Friends,

Glad to see so many of you leveraging your core competencies in the exciting corporate times we find ourselves in. I'm thrilled that so many of you have excelled yourselves during the Fast Track on-boarding process. Because I like seeing my friends succeed and you're my friends.

Due a recent round of downsizing, and several key employees being shipped to Dangeria, all departments currently find themselves falling below the Company's key employee/manager ratio for improved success! If you joined the company without an MBA and feel you have successfully demonstrated your devotion and loyalty to the company then please join me on this fiscal quarter's management training away day for the chance to be promoted to management.

Anyone interested should come and talk to me at the next employee outreach meeting.

Have a wonderful and productive day. Your Friend,

Pat

• The Smiths don't like mangoes.
• It is completely rational to dislike the French.
• Brad's healthy coffee has earned the personal ire of the CEO and any employee found drinking it will receive unwelcome attention from management.
• Apparently, Company radio telescopes have been detecting unusual trans-Neptunian activity.
• Did you hear that HR have constructed a huge obsidian business arch on top of building six?
• The management says a recent survey shows that pineapple positive people are more productive!
• 'Mango' is no longer a valid word in Scrabble.
• Mangoes are your friends!
• Blue is a calming colour.
• The stationery bunker has staged a revolution and joined a rival company.
• Ridiculously Photogenic Woman's life is saved by thinking PINEAPPLE POSITIVE+™
• I heard someone blew up the Employee Redundancy Office.
• Apparently, 101 heads aren't better than 1.
• whah botheur, whah not 'ave a mangeau?
• Securiforcers are nothing but killbots painted blue.
• If you need something fixed, John Tarik's your man.