Not That Kind of Superman

April 29th, 1996 Posted in Cubicle Blues

“Hey, Jay.”

“Hey there. I was just going over this piece you wrote.”

“Yes, I think it’s pretty effective.”

“Mm hm. One thing I wanted to ask about, though. You keep saying that we place only ‘best-of-breed’ performers with our clients.”

“Right. Only the best.”

“Yes. It’s just that I think you meant ‘best-in-class’.”

“What’s the difference? They’re both dog show terms.”

“Well, true. But ‘best-in-class’ got adopted a while back in business lingo. It just means superiority in a given field.”

“Right.”

“Whereas ‘best-of-breed’ connotes that we’re actually breeding people to be the best.”

“You think?”

“Well, it’s just that we’re a staffing company, see. We deal exclusively in people. People are our product, right?”

“Right.”

“So what you’re saying when you talk about ‘best-of-breed’ staff, is that we’re selectively breeding employees to perform better.”

“You don’t think that’ll work, huh?”

“Well, it didn’t for the Nazis.”

“What?”

“The Nazis. Aryan supermen.”

“I don’t follow.”

“The Nazis wanted to wipe out other races and breed German lineage into a race of supermen.”

“What, really? The Nazis did that?”

“Well, they tried. There was a war.”

“Oh, right, that.”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t mean…”

“No. Not that kind of Superman.”

“It’s just that…”

“Not that kind of Superman. I’m positive.”

“So we shouldn’t use ‘best-in’breed’ then, huh?”

“Either that or we should started selectively breeding our temps. We should pick a side of the fence.”

“Alright. Change it back to ‘best-in-class’ then. Anything else?”

[flipping page over] “Well, that takes care of page one. On page two…”