Photo: bricolage

A friend of mine has a smart and effective way of negotiating with her two young children. She uses "gold stars" for lessons learned as currency toward treats and toys.

She Offers Bread. 

Many years ago I worked at a place that used an incentive program like that. In lieu of cash bonuses and transparency about the outlook of jobs, management awarded points for meeting arbitrary goals.

"Wow! Points" they were called. Yeah, like Shrute Bucks, only less funny.

Good money was spent on buttons and brochures to ensure everyone knew what was at stake. They were intended to sell the idea that earning Wow! Points  was an important measure of cube-cred.

Some managers were frugal with the Wow! Point giving, careful not to spend too much political capital on the undeserving. Others took a more populist approach, doling out Wow! Points to everyone who showed up with a pulse.

No managers were eligible to receive Wow! Points themselves because the "upper crust" had other incentives. But the benefits of collecting points were apparent by the catalog of things they could be redeemed for.

Balloons... tchotchkes... Wow! logoed mugs... and more! 

It Was Bread and Circuses. 


"Bread and Circuses" is nothing new. Been around since the days of ancient Rome. A satirist of the time coined the expression to describe petty amusements politicians used to gain popular support. They courted the votes of the poor with cheap food and distracting entertainment. Sound policy was totally beside the point.

The expression still gets used today, though it's more an editorial on an immature culture too absorbed in its own amusement to care much about civic virtues. If news coverage is any barometer, you'd have to conclude that people care about the issues when there's no scandal in the lives of celebrities.

But it makes me wonder. Does the media create a circus out of Tiger Woods' affairs or the love child of John Edwards because it's reacting to the interests of the public, or does the public just watch what's presented because it's reported as news? Maybe it's a little of both. I really don't know.

What I do know is that where I worked all those years ago, most people resented the bread and circuses. Wow! Points were not a good substitute for real information about where the company was going. Sure, it was a reasonable tactic to placate the staff, and some even participated with gusto. But unlike my friend's "gold star" rewards for lessons learned, Wow! Points were just pacifiers. What the company got in exchange for all those balloons and trinkets was exactly what they put out: A bunch of people who got the message they didn't have to be mature, responsible or thirsty for knowledge, because they weren't treated as adults.




Today's Theme Thursday topic is BREAD.