Family first: A way to care about your friends and family

Last Updated on June 12, 2023

This is a fictional satirical piece about nepotism in the workplace.

With Meriotcracy on life support, slowly dying, nepotism is ruling the hiring space or “talent acquisition” in every industry. It has become much worse … or better if you are well-connected.

In one incident, it was found that, though there were no openings at all in a well-established company, a candidate had been called for an interview. The candidate is none other than the nephew of the late founder of the company. In the interview, the management was so impressed with his resume that they decided there is no point in asking further questions because the resume itself had all the answers. The resume was so qualifying that the management reconsidered their previous position of no openings and decided that there is plenty of work for the candidate. The work is to fix his own resume. In fact, they suggested that he can get started with the work immediately and the best place to start the work is by fixing the spelling of the word “Resume” on his resume and also rectifying his pronunciation of the word resume to rez-oo-mey from ri-zoom(meaning pause).

After hearing about hiring an incompetent family member for a job that doesn’t exist, employees were enraged at the company, especially for hiring him with a huge salary. This hiring comes against the backdrop of canceling the bi-annual salary hike agreed by the company leadership. The employees couldn’t stand the injustice committed against them. So, they decided to check with their managers and company leadership. The company CEO gave a response saying that “As with any progressive MNCs in the 21st century, this company has also set its payscale based on 3 criteria – the country where the employee is based in, the number of hours worked in a week, and the difficulty level of the job. This is the same rule for all the employees. Therefore, the company treats everyone equally. If the new employee is getting paid more means their job is also equally more difficult.”

Stewing in resentment, many employees wondered- how could it take more than a few days if not a few hours to fix a resume? But, later, when they got a chance to look at the new coworker’s resume, they were all happy that they were not involved in such a complicated work. And, when they met and got to know both the person and resume-fixing project well, they realized that their anger towards him initially when he was hired was totally unjustified and they apologized for it.

Over time, the company has made a lot of progress in fixing the resumes of its employees. We can easily see that in the increase in the number of employees who are hired because they qualify for friends and family discounts. As more and more people started to avail themselves of the discount, the quality of the company’s operations started to deteriorate. When asked about the company, the last remaining guy who is not related to anyone else in the company said “The company was doomed from the start. The management took the company’s motto literally. The motto is “We are one big family” and now, unofficially, the employees began to call it – “The family that works together stays together“.”

As more and more resume fixers started to join, the company started to lose business to competitors. Eventually, the company imploded and collapsed on its own weight like a house of cards. Unfortunately, the family that worked together couldn’t stay together.

Though most of the employees became homeless, others managed to make a tent to live in with their resumes they can’t fix.

Later, it was learned that it was not them who built the tent but the Public. As the volunteers who helped them angrily said that “Apparently these people don’t know how to fix resumes, how to fix tents, and ultimately, how to fix their problems”