Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[theTrueMikeBrown]

For fun, I just wrote a book about management.

Would anyone be interested in reading it?

Here is the intro:

People are dumb. Really, Really dumb. They are shockingly dumb. I’m talking about a neutron star composed entirely out of hammers level stupidity. Most humans consider television to be educational, and believe random things that they find on the internet. Some even believe things that politicians say. The average human being cannot count to 1. Many don’t even know what the word count means. Some can’t even remember that they are human.
You might think that I am being a bit hyperbolic here, but I am not. The average human being makes any given amoeba look like Einstein. For every neuron that fires in the average person’s brain, one person has been hit in both eyes by a meteorite at the same time.
Humans are dumb. This is an important point to understand if you want to make any sense of the rest of this book, so at the risk of repeating myself too much I have to say again that humans are dumb.
That being said, for the safety of everyone on the earth you need to take charge. If you made it this far in this book then that means that you can read (or that someone made a audio version of this book, which is pretty hard to imagine). If you can read, then you are in the top 0.001% of people on the earth in regards to intelligence.
If you do not take charge, nuclear war might break out at any moment, people could quit getting their immunizations and we could be wiped out by polio, or they could just decide that breathing carbon monoxide is a good weight loss drug. The right thing to do is obviously to convince everyone around you to do exactly what you want them to do. The only way to do this is to be a manager.
If you are already a manager, then you need this book to make yourself a better manager. If you are not yet a manager, then for the good of the human race, become a manager!

[IndigoFenix]

Some are even dumb enough to pay attention to someone just because they made them feel less dumb...

Kind of laying it on a bit thick.  Some of the things you said are objectively false.

[Baffler]

Yeah, needs dialed back about 30 notches. As-is it looks like you wrote it explicitly to repost for karma on r/latestagecapitalism.

[theTrueMikeBrown]

Haha, yeah, it is totally supposed to be way over the top.

Somehow I forgot to mention in the original post that the book is supposed to be a joke. My manager at work made a quote that inspired the entire thing, and it sort of wrote itself.

[theTrueMikeBrown]

Perhaps I wrote it too tongue in cheek, if both of you assumed that I was being serious...

The cover has promises that you will learn about lying, backstabbing, hypnotism, abuse, and much more - it doesn't really teach all that.

[SaberToothTiger]

You overshot there somewhat. I also think that the intro in a bit too congratulatory to the reader just for reading it, though the idea is very much interesting.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

People are dumb. You might think that I am being a bit hyperbolic here, but I am not. That being said, for the safety of everyone on the Earth you need to take charge. If you do not take charge, nuclear war might break out at any moment, people could quit getting their immunizations and we could be wiped out by polio, or they could just decide that breathing carbon monoxide is a good weight loss drug.

The only way to do this is to be a manager.

There, boiled it down for you--100% truth: it's better this way. Professional tip: Don't talk down to your audience. It's not a good hook, I don't want to keep reading. Nor are you painting a good picture of "managers", which is already a term with negative connotations. I certainly don't want to be a manager after reading your introduction.

However. You have explicitly stated that you are writing for fun and in a tongue-in-cheek manner. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt on that one, and assume that you really are doing this. And that you might actually be a good "manager".

In short, you are not writing ridiculously enough. If you are going for a tongue-in-cheek and satirical tone, you need to be more outlandish. You need to be ridiculous. Inane. At the same time, your writing needs to be so incredibly stupid as to be impossible, convincing enough to make us believe it, and then as it reels us in, smart enough to shatter that illusion and throw it back in our faces.

You have some good elements in there, but repetition is actually not very fun at all to read--hit me over the head with your ideas up front and explain them later. Shock me. Reel me in. But don't insult me or turn me off of your book before I even turn the page.

[Yoink]

The over-the-top intro was funny, those who failed to get the humour are simply proving that they are, in fact, human and consequently also dumb.

I'd probably buy a copy, assuming this book makes its way into physical form at some point and can be shipped to Australia - I'm no manager but I am incredibly dumb when it comes to frivolous purchases. Gimme!

[theTrueMikeBrown]

Thanks - I thought that it was fairly over the top, and I will certainly try to make sure that the book is marketed as a humor book. Honestly I have never been a manager, and I have no aspirations to be one.

If anyone is interested, here is Chapter 1 (such as it is)

Chapter 1
Why management is important to you

I heard you were getting a new laptop... I’m gonna throw it off the roof.
Mike Pedersen

This chapter is mainly for people that are not already managers. If you are already a manager, you can still read this chapter to remind you why you are better than the rest of the human race.

By the time that you are done reading this chapter, you will know why it is that you need to be a manager. I have studied this topic for many years to come to these conclusions, and you can just ride on my coattails. This is unfair, but as a manager you need to be used to gaining all sorts of benefits based on the work of other people.

Lots of Money

The point is that you can’t be too greedy.
  Donald Trump

The important thing to remember about management is that managers are important people, and therefore they make large salaries. You want to make a large salary so that you have lots of extra money.

If you are going to be a manager, you probably want to buy a big, fancy car, and a big fancy house. People that are managers always have valuable and expensive things hanging around to show how important they are. You can’t get these things without spending lots of money, or stealing them. In most countries that is illegal, and it is also easy to get caught doing it. Don’t do illegal things unless you are pretty sure that you won’t get caught. Being thrown in jail is not very manager-like.

You may have asked while reading the previous paragraph “What is the difference between valuable and expensive?” The difference is this: expensive things are things that cost lots of money. Valuable things are expensive things that are actually useful. You need both valuable expensive things as well as non-valuable expensive things in order to be a real manager.

One road to managerhood is to get lots of credit cards and buy all of the valuable and expensive things before you are already a manager. This is a great idea, because once people see that you are already living the manager lifestyle, they are sure to defer to you and offer you promotions and make you a manager. Living a lifestyle that you can’t afford is a good way to show that you are manager material.

It is even more manager-like to have and use of lots of money that isn’t even yours. There are many different people who have done this. Study the lives of Frank Abagnale, Charles Ponzi and Loseph Weil for some good ideas about how to do this. Once you have lots and lots of money, people will probably seek you out to give you more money and promotions.

Extra money is helpful in many situations, such as when you are walking down the road, and a car swerves to hit you, and you dive out of the way into a dumpster. You can pile up a bunch of one dollar bills to form an inclined plane and use it as a makeshift ramp to get out of the dumpster. Once you are out, you can recoup the cost by suing the person that almost hit you.

Power

He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome.
Ebenezer Scrooge

Another benefit of being a manager is that managers have power. Lots of people only look at the money that management can bring, but power has its own class of benefits that money alone is not able to convey. As a manager, you have power over your resources.

For those who don’t understand the word resources, I will define it now. Resources are the people that you are in charge of. Other words that mean the same thing are peons, peasants, grunts, slaves, underlings, subordinates, inferiors, minions, lackeys, flunkies, vassals, subjects, hirelings, servants, henchmen, and drones.

If you are in a bad mood, you can make their life miserable. If you are in a good mood, you can give them half a day off. Pretty much you can do whatever you want. If you are in a really bad mood, you can fire people for no real reason. If you are already a manager, you should try doing this some time for fun.

It’s no big deal if they take it seriously and actually leave, since resources are replaceable. It is not like any given resource is any better than any other one. People have an illusion that one resource could be better capable of handling particular problems than other resources, or that resources are not actually all the same deep down. This illusion is false.

Resources are Resources, and they are fundamentally different than managers. The thing that separates them is that managers are critical to the functioning of the business, and resources are just like little leeches that hang on and live off of the dregs that managers discard.

Money and Power

Money is power, and power gives you choice.
Sam Rockwell

This is the real point of this chapter. The combined might of money and power is the real thing that you gain from being a manager. You need to be a manager because you will have both money and power.

The combined might of money and power can get you through any problem that you might encounter. It is well known that money and power can solve all problems that exist, and it has even has been proven by astrology and phrenology that money and power can solve all problems that could exist. Scientists are feverishly working on the infamous P=NP problem, which is the question of weather power and money can solve all problems that couldn’t possibly exist.

I think that the answer is yes. Power and money can even solve all problems that couldn’t possibly exist. You need to realize this for yourself. In order to help your subconscious brain recognize this fact, I have prepared a visualization technique for you to use.

Under no circumstance should you attempt this visualization technique while you are operating power machinery, motor vehicles, or one or multiple zambonis. When you are ready to start this technique, lay face down on a comfortable Hästens bed, with the air temperature exactly 74 degrees Fareinheit and 84% humidity. Ambient noise should be no more than 150 decibels. If you do not yet own a Hästens bed, you can also prepare for this by balancing in a one handed crow pose on top of the headrest of an office chair.

Imagine the following scenario: You are sitting at a big expansive desk. You are lighting an expensive cuban cigar with a 100 dollar bill. Your secretary talks to you over the intercom and says that one of your resources - Johnson - wants to talk to you. You say “Send him in”, and in a moment he is in front of you. He walks over to your desk, and starts to ask you some question.

You have a hard time focusing on what he says (it’s not really important anyway), but when he is done, you say “No, Johnson, I think that you need to think it over again and tell me why you were wrong.” Johnson frowns a little bit, and you reach over and flip the switch that drops him into the pit of alligators and snakes. Laughing, you light up another cigar.

You need to commit this mental image to heart. This needs to be the thing that drives you to get out of your Hästens bed in the morning, and makes you into the person that you need to be in order to be the right type of manager.

One way to make it more real to you is to imagine it with all of your senses. How would the switch feel on your finger? What color is Johnson’s tie? What sound would the floor make as it dropped away? What do alligators smell like anyway? Thoughts like these will help to make this more real to you.

[Yoink]

This already has to be in my top 5 'non-fiction' books of all time.
Keep it coming!   

[theTrueMikeBrown]

Thanks for the positive feedback - Here is how chapter 2 currently stands:

Chapter 2
The divine right of managers

The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king.
Graham Chapman

People that are managers are better than people that are not managers. This has been proven countless times through computer simulations and anagrams. I don’t think that I need to even provide any more backing than the universal acclaim that they receive in every venture that they are part of, and their universal lack of any detractors.

What is not so well known is that managers have an innate right to boss resources around. Once someone ascends to managerhood they become infallible, and the best possible person to make any decisions - even if they were not in any way knowledgable about the subject before their ascension.

Some resources think that this is not true, but they are wrong. Managers are always right. One time when I was a resource I witnessed two managers disagreeing on about what color a button should be on a website that I was making. I thought that that proved that one of them was wrong, but I was the one that was wrong.

Once the managers talked to each other for long enough they agreed to make the button both colors, and the resulting website was way better than it was beforehand. This always happens. Every. Single. Time.

If you are a manager already, you can rest assured that you always do the correct thing all the time. If you are not yet one, look forward to the day that you will be like that.

The biggest problem to managers is the fact that some resources do not seem to recognize that managers are always right. This can be both annoying and dangerous to an organization. It is important to remember that people are stupid (see the preface if you forgot). With this in mind, you need to use certain techniques to get them to follow your perfect guidance. Chapter 4 contains more information that you will find useful in your attempts to use such techniques.

Before we get to chapter 4, however, I have prepared chapter 3, which provides many different examples of managers (both historical and fictional) which you should study and learn from. Studying them will show you how much better managers are than resources.

[FallacyofUrist]

Michael Scott!

[theTrueMikeBrown]

Ha ha - somehow I didn't include any quotes from him so far...

That will be remedied.

[Reelya]

I think you need to write in bigger chunks.
https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/douglas_adams

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.

Notice how Douglas Adams starts with the claim, then contrasts it with something silly, but then brings that right back to the original topic in a way that actually highlights how hard it is to comprehend how big space is, but in a funny way. So the point isn't just "say silly thing", the silly thing has a reason for being there, and the end of the paragraph pulls everything back to the topic. Contrast Adam's style to your writing:

People that are managers are better than people that are not managers. This has been proven countless times through computer simulations and anagrams. I don’t think that I need to even provide any more backing than the universal acclaim that they receive in every venture that they are part of, and their universal lack of any detractors.

"anagrams" is just there to be random. It sticks out as a "what the ..." but it doesn't stick in the mind because it doesn't tie back into the topic. Something like that would only be funny if you ended the paragraph with a joke that had a double meaning via an anagram. e.g. refer to how managers are known for their "cunning stunts" (which is a spoonerism - a type of anagram).

What is not so well known is that managers have an innate right to boss resources around. Once someone ascends to managerhood they become infallible, and the best possible person to make any decisions - even if they were not in any way knowledgable about the subject before their ascension.

Same issue here. None of the statements in this paragraph have any bearing on each other. The ascension stuff at least shouldn't be attached to the first section. For example, you could follow up "boss resources around" with an example of how that works, then add an ironic punchline which "proves the point" that was being made at the start, but in some way that's the direct opposite of common sense. Tie each paragraph into one core concept.