Worthless memos in the workplace

A coworker just passed me a memo. The company I work for, especially my department, loves to send memos. All the fellow drones and I could wallpaper our cubes three times over with the memos we get and still have some left over to line our cats' litter boxes with at home. This is a Fortune 500 company with computer terminals on every desk and a high speed internet connection that's ideal for blogging and yet they still pass out the latest nebulous information on 8 1/2 X 11" sheets of paper.

Not only do most of the memos have absolutely nothing to do with my position or anyyone else in my department's position, they're just some of the driest and most mind-numbingly boring write-ups you could possibly read. As a result we don't really read them so much as we fake-read them and either toss them over to the next cube or, in my case, toss it into the trash.

So what sort of pressing news from the higherups has landed in my cube, you may ask? The first paragraph looks a little something like this:

Subject: Revised Vulnerability Assessment Procedures

XYZ's Vulnerability Assessment Procedures have been revised. These procedures detail XYZ's process for assessing network-based infrastructure for security vulnerabilities. Assessments performed include the following: Web vulnerabilities, external and internal network vulnerabilities, telephony vulnerabilities and third-party vulnerabilties. This document in its entirety can be found on the coporate intranet site at www.xyz.com/Pointless Policies & Forms/Misinformation Security.

There, aren't you glad I shared?

If you walked by my work station and saw this memo sitting atop my desk you might think my work duties include hiding weapons of mass destruction or at the very least warding off corporate espionage. But no, I am a mere worker bee who, aside from helping John Q. Public over the phone, spends most of his time reading blogs or just wandering the cube farm asking Have you seen my stapler?

This was the third memo I received today, and one more found its way into my in-box just in the time it's taken me to type this out. Meanwhile another memo is going around asking people to donate either money or school supplies for needy children. Am I the only one who sees the hypocrisy in all this? Maybe if the corporate bigwigs would put the kibash on all this paper squandering there'd be a few extra shekels to go into the little crayonless kids coffers. I swear, this company gives a new meaning to the words wastepaper basket.

You know, that reminds me. I need to take all my old scattered paperwork and dump it in the bin to be shredded. Yes, we actually pay a document disposal company who comes around, collects the top secret trash from the specially appropriated locked bins and shreds it on site. The bins are located right next to the large boxes labeled STYROFOAM PELLETS, DISPOSABLE DIAPERS AND OTHER NON-BIODEGRADABLES. Those I think they just throw into the nearest estuary.

Oh well, at least I'm up to date on the web and telephony security vulnerabilities.

Origami, anyone?