Breaking Records to Celebrate Records Already Broken
Inspiring salespeople might sound easy. Sales managers launch new programs by offering new incentives to recognize achievement. Celebrating wins, no matter how small, supposedly boosts morale and feeds high energy. Sometimes the magic works. Sometimes it doesn’t. What if your company is going tapioca and management is getting desperate?
The office equipment company I worked for played absurdist games to fire up salespeople. Our president once tried dystopian entertainment to celebrate the company’s most recent sales record by breaking vinyl records. Although it was a clever play on words, he used the idea only once. Since I was a technician; I’ve sometimes regretted that I was never included at sales meetings.
How to smash a record
A clip from It’s a Wonderful Life might be instructive. An old crank Victrola phonograph plays Buffalo Gals while James Stewart and Donna Reed fight about money. Stewart leaves. Reed walks up to the Victrola, swipes the tonearm aside, removes the record, and smashes it on the phonograph cabinet. Domestic fight, a record broken over lost love. There is a better way to watch people smash records. Check out YouTube. No love gets lost for people who compete in record-smashing contests.
A Gong Show
Since it’s fictitious, the Academy of Reality can afford to put on a more spectacular show than vinyl record smashers could. A huge stainless-steel disc hangs from a tripod like a gong in the old Gong Show, a TV contest for amateur performers. If boredom or poor taste grabs your attention, check out the online reruns that either slipped through or stood the test of time. If they disliked a performance, the audience booed their disapproval. A demonic muscle man struck a massive gong with an oversized padded drumstick. The performers retreated from the stage, stung by harsh reality when they found out for whom the gong tolled.
How to Destroy a Disc That’s Not Vinyl
The Academy’s Director doesn’t need to perform Wonderful Life, or the Gong Show to celebrate success. He’s too sophisticated to copy a TV show. To memorialize the newest sales record, he needs to destroy a steel disc, a crude likeness of a record that’s not vinyl. He dons welders’ goggles. A rookie tech lights up an oxyacetylene cutting torch, the gas ax of the working people. He twists a valve slightly, adding more oxygen to the mix. The flame turns from yellow to a dark blue; the severe hissing sound intensifies as if to intimidate. Room lights dim The Director directs the intense blue flame at the platter’s topside. The steel turns cherry red, burns through, and showers yellow sparks on officers, keyboard jockeys, and techs alike. The torch slices slowly downward through the stainless steel. Supposedly, the flying sparks don’t sting much.
Top Tech Award
Contests try to motivate workers to play new-age proletariat games. I worked in an office equipment shop for a couple of years before becoming an onsite tech at an insurance company. At monthly meetings, one field tech out of sixty would win a tech of the month plaque. I worked in-house with one supervisor and one coworker. Based on our stats, my coworker won the shop tech performance award eleven months a year. I always won top shop tech of the remaining month when he took vacation time off. The meeting needed a laugh. No matter who won, the new plaque always ended up in the trash.
