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Do you agree that human intelligence is the biggest threat to humanity? Are you taking me for a cynic? Please don’t! I will prove to you with a fair amount of authenticity that both human progression and regression have happened because of the use and abuse of human intelligence. Technology has been used to kill and destroy, be it through an atomic war, trojan, or through creation of a biological weapon. Now technology or should I say applications have intruded every aspect of our lives? We wake up through an app, get up and start walking and another app counts our steps and pulse rate, and then another helps us to remove the curtain to let the sunlight in, and so on. Suddenly there is an avalanche of apps, an app-avalanche out there. It’s an app and apps all the way! We hardly realize that the more dependent we become on apps, the more we resemble our distant ape ancestors.

Read more: The Looming Menace of Artificial Intelligence

Don’t feel offended as apes are our most respected ancestors. Although some people use their brains less than an ape does in deciding which banana to pick, still the humans get offended if compared with an ape. This is one of the biggest concerns of humanity. They have a self-esteem which they feel is their birth right! It’s something that has been carried by their forefathers to be handed over to them and they feel offended if they are called a dolphin. But they feel elevated if they are called a lion although this animal is not in our lineage!

Humans lack acceptability but most of them accept technology at ease. They take pride in accepting and using new technology. We take it as a compliment, and feel a chip on our shoulder if our intelligence is compared with artificial intelligence. But it is our human right to protest if our intelligence is compared with an ape, no matter what relationship we have had with them in the past. Who cares about the past? We always want to make our future glorious. In that endeavor, we can blacklist our shady past forever painting black on its face! That’s why we invent technology and try to forget our past. Precisely, that’s the reason we have so many applications right from the time we wake up.

Read more: The Menace of Security in New Age Enterprises

The Application Revolution – The Trackers and Trickers

In the office and at work we have at least ten trackers and applications to fill up. Just doing the work well is not enough. Measuring it with a yardstick is also necessary. You have to bisect, dissect, and intersect it with more trackers like a paranoid detective. How many times have we gotten up from the desk and how many times we went to the restroom and wasted our productive hours? All are measured by the applications. Machines and applications are becoming smarter day by day. The day is not far when your toaster will start giving you performance reviews.

Laugh aloud: Ace the Performance Appraisal Process and Praise the Lord

There shouldn’t be any regrets. Freedom has to be impaired to push humanity to prosperity. To get something, you need to sacrifice something. So, you are always under 360-degree surveillances. Cameras on the top, trackers in the computers, several applications, and worksheets to measure your productivity, biometric systems to measure how long you were in the office and so many. You are also told to fill out different trackers with diverse details. It’s like asking to dig your graves and the depth of it is measured by the trackers. All these data taken together are compiled to make your karma chart. These trackers decide your destiny. It’s not the quality of your work or your customers’ happiness that matters, but these trackers decide how good you are at your job and what you deserve.

We know, our phones suck! The computers suck! The biometric machine sucks! The trackers suck! At the same time, the tragedy is we cannot live without them. We are surrounded by technology and machines, and we are allowing them to rule us. They will rule us tomorrow. Wars will be fought by robots and worker’s intelligence will be replaced by artificial intelligence. Babies will be born in test tubes, and we will have enough problems to laugh at our progress. Before this dreadful day comes, read my comics, appreciate my foresight and hindsight, and laugh aloud. I will be around again next week to amuse you and tickle your funny bone. Till then, goodbye!

See ya!

Yours laughingly,

Norman & Ozi.

First of all, a hearty welcome to our fun club. The fact that you have opened this piece of newsletter and are reading it hints you are fond of humor and love to laugh. Not only that, but you also want to tickle and tune your funny bone and increase your status. You want to take things and situations lightly and crack jokes when everyone is embroiled in terminal seriousness. Phew, you want to show how confident you are when confronted with a challenge. You want people to laugh at your jokes and make them feel that you are with them with a sense of warm comradery. By now you must be impressed by my character reading skills as I predicted so much about you without seeing your astrological chart. That’s because not only great men think alike, but jokers also do!

👉 Read here! Transform Your Workplace with Humor!

The first step that you need to take without taking any offense either to me or to life is you need to rediscover the joyous and carefree spirit of your inner child. The more you do the more you will have the ability to embrace the absurd and laugh in the face of adversity and seriousness. Seeing the life around you, especially the impermanence in nature and your inability to hold on to something or anything will also make you laugh.

Have I made you a little serious with my philosophies? Then take a few deep breaths and when you exhale make a sound that relieves your exhaustion. The people near you may feel amused or laugh at your sudden grunts. Ensure that you laugh with them too! Laugh at yourself or add a comment that makes them even more amused. If you can, you have learnt it! This is what I mean by taking situations lightly and without purpose.

Are you thinking that my ideas are a bit risky, and you may have to bait your self-respect? Fear not, my aspiring humor aficionado, for the risk is merely a mirage in the desert of your doubts. In the grand comedy of life, taking risks is the punchline that leaves everyone in stitches. Remember, the legendary comedians didn’t play it safe; they took risks, made bold moves, and, yes, sometimes faced tomatoes thrown by disgruntled audience members. But guess what? Those comedians became icons, and those tomatoes became souvenirs of their audacity. So, my friend, dare to be bold, throw caution to the wind, and let your self-respect dance to the rhythm of your laughter.

👉 Click here to read: Laugh Out Loud with These Office Pranks!

Humor can be a great glue for relationships strengthening bonds and banishing bruises. Your witty remark or playful banter or maybe a well-timed joke can become a balm for someone’s heart. It is indeed a great gift when someone recollects your banter and laughs alone. Don’t forget that’s an opportunity to make a mark in one’s heart forever! All being said, remember, a couple that laughs together stays together and an organization that laughs together prospers together! So, laugh and make people laugh till we meet again, and beware that you don’t contract the disease named Acquired Amusement Deficiency Syndrome (AADS).

Laughingly Yours,

Norman & Ozi

While the Statue of Liberty stands tall in the open beside the Hudson River, there is a tendency for people to flock to the cubicles. It so seems that power, peace, and prosperity are all in the corporate cubicles and behind glass doors. Although people take pride in getting segregated in the cubicles, I feel it’s a novel way to isolate people’s stupidity, lest their brains get contaminated. But the bosses don’t understand this underlying intention. They take pride in being isolated in the cabins and cubicles. They feel their social prestige gets a boost if they are in a cubicle rather than in a common space. This is the subtle relationship between space and power that people most often misinterpret.

Then there are rooms with glass doors. These are the places reserved for even more incompetent people. These are not the people who are born smart. They are the kind of people who are born dumb, and these ninnies are made to believe the more intelligent you are, the more isolated you should be. They believe isolation breeds power.

They end up in isolated glass chambers away from the maddening crowd only to conserve their stupidity.  The paradox is, that these folks consider themselves very intelligent or rather the most intelligent of the lot. Some consider themselves the most intelligent on the planet and so they are unique as homo sapiens. They deny the fact that we are all stupid by nature and intelligence is just a faculty like that of the olfactory function. They ignore the fact that intelligence endowed by nature is to make us feel we are self-reliant in this world of natural stupidity.

These bunch of clowns feel they are so intelligent that they are self-sufficient, and their exceptional qualities need conservation. This vanity makes them more imbecile than they really are and for the conservation of Karma, they are imprisoned behind the glass doors. The irony is that they don’t realize this in their lifetime. On the contrary, the paradox is as they become more isolated, their pay cheques become fatter. This renders these folks a sense of complacency based on the perceived value of their talents. In reality, they get their share of the incompetence bonus as they seem to be more intelligent in this seemingly stupid world.

Where are you? Are you in a cubicle or behind the glass doors? Jokes apart, wherever you are, irrespective of whether you are surrounded by glass doors or bound by a cubicle, you have to realize your limitless self. For that, you have to laugh and make people laugh! Read my web comics, subscribe to my comic newsletter, go through my office cartoons, and amuse yourself and others. Read my blogs and newsletters regularly and go through my office comics to laugh and be happy and don’t forget to share these with your friends and foes.

Laughingly yours,

Norman & Ozi

I hope God is watching the contemporary audacity of science. Yes, it’s the robots and the Artificial Intelligence. I am not at all happy with them. Why should I be? From the beginning of civilization, humans used their intelligence to reign over what they surveyed. This intelligence which humans think they have in plenty has been repeatedly used to betray their own race and even annihilate it. Now, we are injecting the same intelligence in raw and inert matter. Although I am discriminatively optimistic, I can’t be too cheerful about this robotic influence and artificial intelligence.

Albeit, it is called artificial intelligence, but it has already proved to be a sort of disruptive intelligence. Tasks like writing and thinking which were considered pursuits of the intellectual fraternity are now just a matter of clicks. If you ask the generative artificial intelligence questions that require emotional capabilities, it says it doesn’t have it like we do. But I doubt its integrity. It certainly can’t be relied on totally as the intelligence model is congruent with humans.  We cannot rely on it fully and believe all that it says. When human intelligence has given birth to deception, what is the guarantee that a contraption built on the same principles will not deceive?

Read the hilarious newsletter, “Should you be humorous at the workplace?“

As Shakespeare, the greatest poet of all times said, “What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties”. The same applies to the robots. Robots, the paragon of human creation! How human-like in nature! If that has to be true, you can’t call me paranoid. Humans have made sure that all the virtues and vices of the homo sapiens have been injected into the robots. They function as the humans do. They will soon connive against you as your enemies do. These robots and bots have already created a disturbing disruption in the workplace. They are the cause of separation of so many employees as the employees have proved to be dumber.

Read the newsletter, “Ace the Performance Appraisal Process and Praise the Lord💰” and laugh aloud.

So, dear humans, be cautious! You will soon be dethroned from your positions as you have removed others from their jobs. Don’t forget, that intelligence is dynamic. It increases with time and an intelligence that has been created following your model is sure to dethrone you from your glory. These robots and bots are not just glorified calculators, they are your destiny, your karma. They are surely going to take revenge for all your past misdoings. That day you will have no weapons to combat. It’s because you have endowed them with the most precious of your faculty: Intelligence. That’s the day, you will become artificially stupid. You will no more be called the most intelligent being on the planet. Your creations with USB ports will then reign with more intelligence and you being comparatively stupid, have to be their victims.

Read this funny newsletter on appraisals, “Laughing Through Appraisals: Unveiling the Paradox of Performance Appraisals”

Did I make you more pensive? Are you worried whether the day is nearing when the robots will have good laughter on us, the humans? Don’t worry as that’s the biggest worry that humans can ever invite. Just laugh it out as all my arguments may have seemed realistic but they were intended to amuse you and make you laugh! So, laugh aloud and be happy but don’t forget to browse the new additions of office comics and cartoons on my web comics page. That will keep you healthy! That’s it for this week! See you again next week!

Yours laughingly,

Norman & Ozi

Whether you realize it or not, the corporate world is full of humor. Right from the ways of its functioning, recruitment, and making policies, I see an underlying humor and comic art everywhere. In all aspects of a corporation’s functioning a deliberate attempt is made to serve the self-interests of the privileged which becomes a food for office humor. Amid this rampant injustice and incompetence, humor again can help.

A tinge of humor and laughter can bring that light and optimism into the hearts of the employees in an environment where there is constant pressure on the nerves. What I mean to say is, that where you are in continuous compulsion to impress the cardinal elements of a human infrastructure made up of more dumb people than yourself, there will be a sense of suffering. As they say, humor comes from suffering, it can be the only way to vent your suppressed feelings in a seemingly civilized way. In short, this is corporate humor. Although I have deliberately beaten around the bush a little to drive my point home, I hope I was able to define corporate humor.

Laugh loud at Corporate Humor: The Food for Soul in Your Workplace

Humor has many advantages. You can imbibe and communicate a sense of self-confidence through humor. It is like saying ‘nothing matters’. Let me present a happy parallel. When everyone is drowning with the sudden gush of water, humor about the situation is like saying, ‘Hey look, I can walk on water’. This makes you look like an apparent superhero improving your status to more than the mundane.

Humor in corporate doesn’t only make you laugh! It also says, we are in the same boat brother, and we shall overcome. This subtle underlying message injects a bit of optimism and a sense of comradery among your fellow pals. It’s like showing the ability to laugh and giggle while sitting on an anthill. It works as a signal of competence and sends a message to the dolts that ‘See, I am unaffected.’ However, in reality, that may not be the case.

I have seen that humor can be used as a weapon to become an informal leader. People will become fond of you and look for your company. It is like a herd of cows without horns electing a leader cow with horns. Humor is that horn and if used intelligently can give you returns. If you are thinking, how to hone the skills of being humorous at work, you can always refer to some of our funny office web comics and office cartoons. We give you some below. You can explore for more as well and continue cracking jokes and being humorous, and make people laugh aloud ─ you will win!

Read more : Fun at Work – The Tactics and Secrets

The Cons

Mostly corporates work on a common principle – the most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management. And most of the managers are aware of it! They know their strengths and weaknesses well and that’s why they are managers. It gives them an upper hand to play with others’ strengths and weaknesses. If you are wondering why I am telling you the top secret and the principle of corporate hierarchical distribution, hang on. There is a deep connection with the pitfalls of humor with this principle.

When incompetent people sit at the top of the hierarchy, they know what can topple them. They are always scared of that stimulus. Don’t ever let your sarcasm and cynicism hint at their weaknesses. If you do, you hit them below the belt and your jokes can backfire. So, be careful.

Rest is okay! That’s enough for today, till we meet again next week! Till then, keep laughing and make people laugh!

Sincerely Yours,

Norman & Ozi

Hey corporate comrade! Nothing comes easy in life! If you have to ace the appraisal process that’s knocking on the door, you need to be strategic. You need to prove to your boss that you are the most intelligent and efficient worker around who’s been overlooked and treacherously underestimated. You need to make him or her feel that you have been subjugated among the bunch of laggards and idiots. Today, I will teach you the art of communicating this message and get a fair appraisal. So, sit tight!

The first counsel I have for you is to get yourself surrounded by laggards and poor performers. This will make it seem that you are the most intelligent and diligent of the lot. If you are asked to rate yourself on different parameters like punctuality, discipline, creativity, productivity, etc., rate yourself the highest. Even if you come at 11 a.m. and the office starts at 9 a.m., rate yourself five on five on punctuality. The simple reason is to woo your boss’ shame element. If you rate yourself the highest, it signifies you have high self-esteem. Even if your boss were to break it, how far can he or she go? If you continually come after 2 hours from the time the office starts, you rightfully deserve a score of ‘zero’. If you still rate yourself five on five in punctuality on sheer guts, how little can your boss squeeze it to? If he has a little bit of shame in him, he may reduce it to three. There! You gain a score of three!

Read more: 📖🤓Are you Ready for the Dreadful Experience of Performance Appraisal?

The rule is flabbergasting your boss or the appraiser! If you have to meet your expectations of a salary hike in the next appraisal, you have to break others’ expectations so unexpectedly that they take hypertension tablets to survive the shock. The benefit is all yours! Let the buffoon go to hell! Who cares!

Opportunity Areas and the Development Trap

Your appraiser’s sole duty is to look for your lacuna and name them opportunity areas. He or she will tell you that you need to work on these areas but in fact, these are the excuses for your low salary. Your boss is trying to stitch your mouth with a glue under the pretext of development. Your boss may also recommend some training courses for you as if he is treating a patient with acute diarrhoea with intravenous fluids. Beware! Do not allow your boss to dissect your weaknesses by falling into this development trap! Do not allow him to create grounds for the justification of your low salary hike. Then what’s the way out? I will tell you but keep it a secret for your own interests.

🔓 Unlock the gateway to humor🤓: Laughing Through Appraisals: Unveiling the Paradox of Performance Appraisals

The Remedy

If you at all have to be in the development trap and list your opportunity areas, identify aspects of self-development that don’t sound so malicious. Document opportunity areas that are benign and has nothing to do with performance. A few examples of opportunity areas to work on would make it clear.

“I need to be less appealing to colleagues so that they feel less competitive.”

“I need to control my sharp intellect in front of my less-gifted colleagues to foster teamwork.”

“I need to relax to avoid burnout.”

And the like…

A 360-degree solution for a 360-degree Performance Review

For people who do not know what a 360-degree performance review or appraisal looks like, let me give you a fairly unfair idea. All the employees of a department including bosses, subordinates, and colleagues sit in a circle as though they are playing the musical chair game.

They rate each other on different parameters that affect productivity and culture under the columns of everyone’s name and the average score is calculated. By the laws of nature, you score your friends more and your enemies less. You can comfortably call it a consortium of conspicuous conspiracy to squeeze your salary and make you look like an insignificant dwarf. The decree of your character and performance certificate comes out in about an hour where your weaknesses are highlighted, and your strengths are underrated. People who have gone through this abominable ordeal feel like a public molestation of their self-esteem.

Is there a way out?

Of course, there is! If there’s none, we will make one. Here’s my advice.

Make sure you are the last person in the circle to fill out the form. Remember, there is a fixed budget for the appraisal. So never rate your peers and coworkers liberally. The reason is every penny that goes to your coworker is not available for you in the budget. Be selfish and unscrupulous and hammer your coworkers and wink at them so that they are liberal in scoring you. This may sound a little selfish and mean but your coworkers may blow the raise away on education, healthcare, and commitments. You on the other hand may spend it on clothes and luxury items to strengthen the economy. So be wise! Look at the big picture while deciding how your colleagues performed and rate them accordingly.

I have faith in you! You will surely be victorious in making your pockets heavy this year and breed content about your job. With a 13-hour job, you will become a puppet of your boss with hardly any exercise of your facial muscles. If you have liked this newsletter, subscribe! I will come to you with hilarious newsletters and office cartoons of the corporate tomfoolery every week. You can share them to make the planet a more enjoyable place to live in. If you can spare some more time, you can browse my web comic art to keep your blood chemicals in order! That’s it for this week! See Ya!

Laughingly Yours,

Norman & Ozi

When I was a kid of five summers, I remember my parents dropping me to my kindergarten school. The moment they used to drop me off at the school gate, I used to run back to my parents in the reverse direction. Now, I am a so-called educated adult working in the industry. But I cannot figure out the reason why I feel the same when I reach the office, especially on Mondays. I feel like running away in the reverse direction.

Suddenly, chills run down my spine for there is a Monday meeting which I am sure most of you have to attend to show the progress in the bygone week. It also reminds me of the things that I have not done during the last week that I was supposed to do and the targets that I’ve not met. Together, with all of these worries running at the back of my mind, my face probably looks like a shriveled pumpkin, and I am not the only exception! All my colleagues are also bogged in the same worry and so we all look like a bunch of dry pumpkins. When our boss enters the scene, reconciling the status of the work we’ve done in the past week, the situation becomes even more dehydrated. This is the reason most of the heart attacks happen on Mondays.

Dear folks, this is not my assumption or imagination! The British Medical Journal conducted a ten-year study that revealed that people die of heart attacks on Monday mornings five times more than any other time of the week. Now, I don’t think, I have to tell you the reason as it’s obvious that stress is not healthy for the human heart. I hope I was able to establish the fact that Mondays are most dreadful and stressful, unlike the feeling we have when the weekend approaches.

Yes! Weekends are like an oasis in the desert. They give us the optimism to do something drastic and miraculous to change our lives overnight. When Friday approaches, the blood pressure neutralizes, and we start feeling fresher and younger. We tend to forget all the sufferings of life and bask in the euphoria of our plans for the weekends. Alas! Only if life was so sweet, without the disgruntled boss, without the Monday meetings, and the sales targets and performance KPIs. But it’s not so! Life is full of all these unwanted paraphernalia that makes us yearn for an escape.

For many and even for me, the euphoria and the excitement on Fridays start when I am awake from my night’s sleep. The very thought that it’s a Friday energizes me.

Unlike Mondays, I reach the office early with the hope that I will be relieved early. Despite several attempts from my boss to detain me for more time, my happiness knows no bounds, and I eventually escape from that damned contraption before time and hop like a kangaroo as if I have attained salvation.

That’s the power of a Friday! I forget that life and time are cyclical and just after a day, again the dreadful Monday looms large, and I tend to forget all the good things that have happened to me. The face of my boss with a disgusting look haunts my dreams and the same rigmarole of life goes on repeating. Perhaps there is no end to it. We will always be inflated and squeezed in the conveyor belt of life.

If you also feel the way I feel, you can get a little relief from reading my newsletters. As they say, great minds think alike, probably suffering minds also think alike. I understand you. I can empathize with you, and most importantly I have the biggest gift for you in store: laughter! All you need to do is subscribe to this channel. My views of the world, although bizarre, will surely amuse you. You can browse my corporate cartoons and web comics for laughter. If you are a regular reader of my posts and newsletters, I would expect a little encouragement from you. Like my posts as I have to make my boss happy!

That’s all for this week! Till we meet again, share our posts, and encourage others to join our satire club. See you next week!

Laughingly yours,

Norman & Ozi.

Who doesn’t want to be appraised? Of course, we all do! Very rarely do people appraise you or even if they do, we remember their abuses more than their praises. You can surely bribe someone to praise you and if they agree, you will probably be so elated that you wouldn’t want them to stop because of the ripples of the euphoria the applied adjectives would create in you.

Corporate appraisals are just the opposite. Although they are called appraisals, lethal attempts are made to belittle your achievements. Rather, your sins and crimes that you committed during the last year would be enlarged under a microscope to make you look like a veritable worm. Quite often, during the appraisal process, we feel like pulling the hairs of the appraisers or hitting them below the belt for their deliberate attempt to assault our self-esteem. Our survival instincts increase the secretion of unhappy hormones in our brains and our adrenal glands stop functioning during the session.

You come out of the room after the appraisal process, dejected and doomed with a strong urge to do something drastic. Alas! In the end, you must control all your toxic and pent-up emotions and pump in some artificial optimism in your psyche for survival reasons and continued commitments! You tell yourself “Be cool! Relax! Take it easy!”.

Laugh more : Laughing Through Appraisals: Unveiling the Paradox of Performance Appraisals

You come to your desk gasping your emotions in the ether consoling yourself and sink into your chair equating your income with the impending rise of expenses. You cling to the most intimate of your colleagues to vent your frustrations like the first whistle of a pressure cooker on full flame. You ask him to look for jobs as he empathizes with you like a master trying to calm down a restless dog. As the day passes by, your agitations and emotions ebb away. A year also passes by and again you are appraised only to remind you that blessed are the meek for there is the kingdom of heaven.

In theory, the performance appraisal process is looked upon as a productive interaction between the appraiser and the appraisee working in tandem to achieve optimum performance. In reality, the appraiser acts as an appointed broker of the authorities to apportion the salary increment budget within the number of employees. To meet their set targets, the appraisers literalize the achievements of employees to make them look like dwarfs and grant them the bare minimum of scores. In this, the appraisal process seems to be an ordeal that the management can’t avoid, and the employees can’t accept. In this tug-of-war of conflict of interests, it seems to be like finding a dead rat in your backyard and realizing the best solution is to fling it to your neighbor’s compound. Subsequently, your neighbor, disgusted by its obnoxious smell sends it back to you as if it falls under his human rights.

Leaving aside the theory, your manager’s real objective for the performance appraisal is to make you work like a medieval slave and obtain a signed confession of your sins against productivity. In doing so the appraiser could justify your low salary. In sharp contrast, the employee’s objective is to bilk as much unearned money as possible out of the life-sucking force, the employer.

But, don’t worry! Luckily, I am on your side. I hope my conception of performance appraisal was able to gain your confidence. In the next edition, I will attempt to teach you how to bulldoze your appraiser and fill your pockets with the money that rightfully belongs to you. You better not send these editions to your employer because if they get to know, it may backfire! Be optimistic! Good days are sure to come, and your pockets will be full of dough.

Food for more laughter: Corporate Humor: The Food for Soul in Your Workplace

That’s it for this edition! If you have any questions, you can write to me directly at  comics@normanandozi.com. Keep in touch! Browse my posts and go through my corporate jokes and office cartoons to keep you healthy. Share my office jokes to keep the people around you happy! See Ya!

Chucklingly Yours,

Norman & Ozi

No! I am not going to talk about security or cyber-security and perturb you as you are already troubled with malware, viruses, and trojans. Rather, I am going to talk about the insecurity that the security issue has created in the corporate world and the industry.

Corporate citizens seem to lose their sanity in the quest to secure their systems and data. Access cards, security officers, terrorist’s bombs, CCTV cameras, fire extinguishers, fire drills, pest control, smoke detectors, bio-metric access, and so many new security gadgets were already there. Now, along with these came the threats of inadequate cyber security and cyber-attacks. The employees already felt a threat to their self-respect as they were frisked from head to toe by the security guards no matter who they were. Their pantaloons were shaken, and shirts were frisked in search of something suspicious as if they were smugglers and not employees. Now software viruses, software locks, drop-dead devices, malicious logic, malware, worm, and Trojan horse with a few others also followed suit to make their lives miserable.

Earlier, it was just the employees’ self-respect at stake but now with the advent of so many cyber threats, their jobs are veritably at risk. Data has suddenly become more valuable than their lives making the C-suite employees value data more than their hearts or kidneys. Anxiety, paranoia, and sleepless nights invaded their mental sanity and even in their dreams, these electronic particles started intruding their subconscious. Not much is known about how exactly a computer virus works inside the human brain, but its ill effects were widely felt by many. Among others, they increased hypertension and insomnia to a considerable extent. It is an established truth that viruses and malware are not only a threat to data, but they are equally pernicious to human health.

How to get rid of these illogically logical viruses is everybody’s concern today. Chills run down the spine with the words like virus or malware. This is not the first time humanity has faced these kinds of problems. We also fought with vermin or rats who destroyed the crops and chewed the progress of the civilization. We found out that cats can keep the rats away and so we started breeding cats to chase the rats. We belled the cats too and with the sound of the bell, we could get rid of the rats. Hey, wake up! I am not telling you a Tom and Jerry story. It’s about data and hence about life and death. It’s dead serious! Data has the power to get a war waged between two continents. Data has the power to make a rich nation poor and a poor nation rich. It has the power to topple governments. Who can say? It might have the power to convince God to change his plans too.

So, this is not something to be compromised. Data has to be protected. We have to find the cat and bell it too. Hopefully, it will be done! The best of the brains are after it to find a solution. Some think, there is no solution. The problem lies in the solution itself. They say people who find the solution are themselves inventing viruses to get the game going.

Yes! I admit it’s a problem to be worried about! But I am sure something will surely be there, and you will solve it too. This too shall also pass. We shall overcome! Till then laugh and make people laugh! Read our office comics and corporate cartoons and share them to make your heart lighter! A last word! Don’t forget to subscribe to our channel to keep laughing! See ya!

Chucklingly Yours,

Norman & Ozi

I remember a world-famous entrepreneur and the owner of a Fortune 100 company (name withheld for security reasons) saying in an interview: “Entrepreneurial success depends on your ability to hire more talented people than you and make them work in teams.” With such utopian modus operands of successful organizations, the obvious conclusion that any fool can come up with is there are more talents in the lower ranks than in the higher ranks, and the intensity of talents increase as you slip down the corporate hierarchy.

This can also mean the more talented you are the lower your rank would be in the corporate ladder. So, at the end of the year when the appraisal takes place, the appraisee is more talented and resourceful than the appraiser. This inverted funnel of talents is the root of the problem that many companies are overwhelmed with. The result is, the relatively stupid person who is your appraiser makes you accountable for his or her shortcomings and bulldozes the money that rightfully belongs to you.

In this monstrous process of the destruction of one’s self-esteem with the pebbles of others’ drawbacks thrown at you mercilessly, the employee starts bleeding, and a war is raged between the employer and the employee. In a nutshell, this is performance appraisal or performance review which makes the employee feel like Napoleon Bonaparte on the last day of the Battle of Waterloo.

A strange sense of complacency grips the employee with disgust in all the lobes of his or her brain that they desperately try to justify with all their virtues and vices. The employees have to console themselves with the hard-earned wisdom that capabilities are not directly proportional to monetary growth and fulfilment of desires. This uncanny wisdom earned at the expense of employees’ own loss becomes the inspiration for another coming year. And for some who cannot suppress their expectations take recourse to gullible ways of increasing their earnings through appraisals.

Despite the good intent of the theorists of the performance appraisal process to bolster the organizational will with appreciation and monetary incentives, the performance review seems to put a brake on the positivity of the employees’ psyche. They are made to believe they are not as good as they think of themselves and they are forced to pay the penance of their sins against productivity that they have committed throughout the year, lest their good deeds, virtues, and sacrifices.

Building Immunity is Important

As you become more experienced in the rigmarole of the whole process of the performance appraisal, the degree of your mental injury reduces as you start building mental antibodies. Albeit the process is very scientific to woo the employees, inflate their expectations, and break their hearts. They are expected to document the achievements and strengths that they exhibited in the bygone year that their bosses or appraisers are expected to squeeze into negligible trivia. To the unprepared employee, this may seem like hammering the last nails of their own coffins.

Sotto Voce

Irrespective of all your achievements, your appraiser of the performance appraisal process takes care of the main objectives of the process. They are:

• Make your contribution to the organization look negligible.
• Get your signed confession about the crimes you committed against productivity at all levels.
• Justify your low salary with irrevocable decrees of irrationality.

Nevertheless, no matter what kind of discomfort you are subjected to, I, Norman, my friend Ozi, and my colleagues are with you. Subscribe to our newsletter to laugh at our digital comics published daily for mental strength as you get to know that you are not alone. Click here to check out our online office cartoons. Write to us at comics@normanandozi.com for us to throw light on subjects often overlooked.

See ya!

Sincerely Yours,

Norman & Ozi