The satirical Retrospective 2020
A software tool from Microsoft uses mail and calendar data to analyze how wisely you spend your time based on criteria such as focus, well-being and collaboration. We shall leave the data quality aside here. The clou, says a lawyer who advises companies in connection with the tool: If the tool shows poor values in terms of well-being, an employee can use this as an argument to demand support during the appraisal interview. Great. So that’s where we are: my app tells my boss how I am doing. No wonder that no one has heard anything more about this tool.
A neuroscientist finds out that caressing at three to ten centimeters per second and at a temperature of thirty-two degrees Celsius stimulates the skin's receptors particularly strongly. So, the next time you feel a romantic moment, have a stopwatch and thermometer ready.
An investment advisor from Genève Invest in a newspaper article on April 3, i.e. during the Swiss lockdown: "In times of crisis, I can get more money out for my clients". How should I interpret that? Corona, wars, earthquakes, and he loves it? "Oh, a nursing home burned down, give me my coffin stock?" Refreshingly direct. Well, at least it wasn't a wrong quote (the first one, I mean, the one about the coffins was mine. Sorry.), as it came from a sponsored article. So, it can be assumed that the company wanted to say exactly what it is saying: Crises are great somehow.
The punchy CEO of a headhunting company makes pithy statements about co-leadership, as follows: "Co-leadership is a shared responsibility. But if someone prefers to share responsibility rather than bear it alone, then he is not very suitable for leadership.” Hear, hear. Whenever you think that the heroic model of leadership is extinct, a T-Rex with a bloody piece of meat in his mouth pops up again. And then he goes one better: "...if a company wants to offer leadership in part-time jobs and thus enable women in leadership positions...". Of course, men would never have the idea to want to lead part-time. John Wayne was not a part-time cowboy, was he?. The dinosaurs are still among us, but they are becoming fewer and fewer. I hope so. Please.
Lead text on August 8: "Lonza CEO Albert Baehny makes the active ingredient for Moderna!" How he still finds time for that besides his CEO job...when will we stop this nonsense?
A professional pilot fills entire halls with executives, to whom he then explains what they can learn from pilots. Replace "pilot" with "mountaineer", "conductor", "paraglider pilot", "top athlete". This fills halls, and temporarily euphorized executives rant to themselves: "Great lecture. We really have to do this." Transfer probability: approaching zero. I will never understand.
And then, of course: A psychoanalyst (who else?) is questioned. Why does everyone think that psychoanalysts, of all people, can explain the world? So he is questioned, among other things about gazers in accidents. His canonade of interpretation: "What do most gawpers secretly think? (The analyst knows that, of course.) Ah yes, another one drove too fast, that's what he gets for it (no doubt the obvious thought when you stand in front of a blood-soaked, seriously injured person lying in front of you). In this strict judgement there is always the desire to do the same, to speed on the highway (yes, I always wanted to do that, thanks for the reminder). At the same time, the gawper is also part of the punishment (an accident as punishment? Now it’s becoming fanatic), which is also a lust (of course. Don't tell me that you don't feel pleasure when you punish. Have you already punished today?). My dear. Next time I read "The Psychoanalyst...", I'll just turn the pages. Honestly.
This year has brought us enough madness. I wish you all the best for 2021. Let it be a good year.
