Absurdity
Corporate Memo Reminds Employees Poverty Is a Mindset, Not a Lack of Money
By BSN Staff, . BSN Network. Satire.
STAMFORD, CT. Vantage Solutions Group, a mid-size logistics consulting firm, distributed an internal memo Thursday informing its 1,400 employees that poverty is fundamentally "a pattern of thought" and that financial stress can be resolved through "intentional reframing and a daily gratitude audit."
The memo arrived at 9:14 a.m. The announcement freezing cost-of-living raises arrived at 9:09 a.m.
The document, a four-page PDF titled "Unlocking Your Abundance Mindset: A Vantage Wellness Initiative," was authored by Chief Mindset Officer Brendan Collier, a position the company created in February at a reported salary of $290,000 a year. Collier previously worked as a life coach in Scottsdale, Arizona, where his practice specialized in helping executives "release the scarcity narrative" for $800 a session.
"Money is simply energy," the memo reads, in its opening paragraph. "When we hold a scarcity mindset, we repel the very abundance we seek. Vantage is committed to helping every team member vibrate at a frequency of financial wholeness."
The memo does not define financial wholeness. It does include a QR code linking to a Spotify playlist titled "Abundance Frequency," which opens with forty minutes of wind chimes and a spoken-word track in which a man with a British accent tells the listener their debt is "a teacher, not a sentence."
In a statement, Collier said he was proud of the initiative. "This isn't about ignoring material circumstances," he said. "It's about understanding that our relationship with money begins in the mind, and that Vantage employees have access to world-class tools to transform that relationship." He then clarified that the tools cost nothing, which he called "a gift."
The tools are: a breathing exercise, a journaling prompt asking employees to list five things money cannot buy, and a recommendation to limit contact with "financially negative people," a category the memo does not further define but which several employees said they assumed referred to each other.
Reaction inside the company was swift and, depending on the floor, either spiritual or felonious.
Teresa Huang, a logistics coordinator in Vantage's Memphis office who has worked at the company for eleven years, said she read the memo twice to make sure she had not misunderstood it. She had not. "I drive forty minutes each way, my rent went up $400 this year, and they sent me a wind chime playlist," she said. "I journaled about it. The journal said I should find a new job."
Another employee, who asked not to be named because they are, in their words, "still technically employed," said they completed the gratitude audit as instructed. "I am grateful," they said, "that I have not yet been evicted."
CEO Marshall Pryce, who earned $34 million in total compensation last year according to the company's most recent proxy filing, did not respond to requests for comment. His reserved parking space in the Stamford headquarters garage is labeled, per a photograph provided by an employee, "MP, Executive Suite." Collier's is labeled "Abundance Zone."
The memo was forwarded externally within three hours of distribution and had been shared widely by afternoon, primarily by people who included no commentary because they felt none was necessary.
Vantage's HR department issued a follow-up communication at 2:45 p.m. stating that the original memo had been "taken out of context" and that the company "remains deeply committed to employee financial wellness." The follow-up did not announce raises. It announced a second webinar.
The webinar is called "Debt as a Doorway" and is scheduled for a Tuesday, which is, for most of the 1,400 employees, a workday for which they will be paid the same amount as last Tuesday.
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