There is not so much that I miss about working in an office. One thing in particular I really don’t miss are those ubiquitous motivational posters. And of course I mean they were everywhere.

The meeting rooms were mad with them. Most of the drones, in a conspiracy of conformity, decorated their sad cubicles with them. A few conform freaks even had them as their screensavers.

Likely, you know the ones that I mean. Whales and dolphins snatched from their habitat used to pitch success, motivation, determination, teamwork. Sepia-coloured roads and lakes and rose-coloured skies pushing achievement, individuality, pride, action, perseverance.

It was sick. I expected the posters to say in fine print at the bottom, “This motivational drivel brought to you by Big Brother Inc.”. I wanted to free the suffering animals from this nonsense. This was clearly abuse. I mean, come on, using a lion to sell integrity? A lion, a captive of his own instincts, knows nothing of integrity. Just ask any zebra. Don’t be stupid, stupid. Dolphins championing harmony. Poor emasculated dolphins. Joggers at dawn with the happy caption: “While most are dreaming of success, winners wake-up and work hard to achieve it.” Gag. A lighthouse: “Success doesn’t come to you, you go to it.” Puh-lease.

An aesthetic of corporate motivation. Who thinks this is a good idea? Knock it off. It’s sick. Innocuous, unsavory chicken soup for the canceled and crushed corporate soul.

Not content with the desire to free the suffering animals, I became overcome with a sort of demotivational anarchy. I had a few ideas. Please forgive the extremity; my good sense — if I had any — was under constant assault.

Cute albino baby seals, skulls crushed bleeding satin red in the snow. Black empty eyes looking up. Men blurry in the background. “Make a living the best way you know how.”

Dolphins mating ferociously, silver and luminous in the thrashing water: “Screw harmony.”

A lion, bloodlust in his eyes, tucking into a zebra carcass: “The fastest gets the prize.”

A beached whale, bloated and pale in the sun: “Sometimes the choices you make will be stupid.”

In the rose-coloured dusk, a racehorse on its side, with a broken leg and a rifle shot to the back of its head: “You’ll be pushed too hard.”

Vultures in the sepia-toned desert: “Take the scraps you can.”

An emaciated husky, foaming at the mouth: “At best, teamwork means you will be used to disguise somebody else’s sloth, and at its worse, somebody else’s gross incompetence.”

A great champion of demotivation, however, I never did anything about it. It occurs to me that anybody truly compelled by demotivation wouldn’t have. Perhaps, if I could have taken that joggers poster to heart, I might have had better luck. Still, it comes as no surprise that somebody else — clearly more motivated than I — has, as it were, believed it and achieved it. You can browse and buy demotivational posters at Despair Inc.

SS