Thomas Shields stood in the back of a
large conference room. He wore a crisp
navy suit, with a red and white tie.
When he bought the tie, the salesman asked him what kind of ties he
liked. Tom had replied that he wanted a
tie that he could wear if he were the President and was addressing the
nation. He looked the part on this
particular day. The suit was perfectly
pressed and not a strand of his brown hair was out of place. Tom had a square jaw that would look menacing
if his bright blue eyes didn’t look so friendly. He certainly looked like he could be a
Presidential candidate, if he was about fifteen years older.
The room was unnecessarily large for
today’s purpose; there were only about twenty new employees sitting in the rows
of chairs that could have seated seventy-five.
Tom’s boss Doug was standing at the podium at the front of the room,
addressing the new employees.
“Congratulations,” Doug said, “as of
today, your resume will forever be more impressive than most of the people you
went to school with. When you say you
work at NASA, people are impressed. It
doesn’t matter that we aren’t astronauts or rocket scientists, working for the
agency comes with a measure of prestige.”
Tom had heard this speech about a half
dozen times, going back to his own orientation, and it never failed to amuse
him when Doug called NASA “the agency.”
Most people, of course, used that term when referring to the CIA, but
Tom noticed that Doug (and other senior officials in NASA) would use the term
when they wanted to sound a little more important.
“In this room,” Doug continued, “are
accountants, business analysts, IT specialists and human resources
specialists. The areas you’ll be working
in form the infrastructure of NASA and are as crucial to the mandate of the
agency as the astronauts and rocket scientists.”
Again, Tom had to smile to himself. What Doug was leaving out was that the
infrastructure was crucial, but the individuals were far more replaceable than
any of the astronauts or rocket scientists.
Doug’s speech was well calculated, though. He came off as a zealous supporter of NASA
and that’s exactly what the wide-eyed new employees needed at this stage. The turnover rate was extremely high due to
the high workload and low pay, so sparking enthusiasm early helped stave off
apathy for a little while longer. It had
clearly worked on Tom.
