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AOL's Borg "You Will Be Assimilated" Mentality


Note: Knight's questions/comments are those displayed in red, while the sources text is black, and AOL internal memos/letters are in purple typeface.

Two things I forgot about, one scared me quite a bit...

In September we had a nationwide company meeting...during it we were given a list, supposedly from Michael Jordan, the basketball player, about what made a success... One of the suggestions was to "Eradicate the sickness of ME." The sickness of ME was explained as having any negative attitudes toward the company, as seeing yourself as having your own personal identity separate from the company, and seeing yourself as separate from other employees on your team..you were supposed to be one with everyone...just like the Borg...you will be assimilated, you are 7 of 9!

We were also told during "Sherlock" training that AOL's intent is to own the Internet, and that it would in the near future. It already owns ICQ, Sprynet, and now Gateway.net.

The speeches and claims reminded me of Adolf Hitler and his desire for Lebensraum for Germany.

AOL's CAT department also does monitoring of accounts, internal and member's, to keep track of any potential problems and "catch" people doing TOS violations...this includes monitoring and saving IM' from member's to each other, and any other trick they pull..the Community Action team reports it and people's accounts are canceled...and this in direct violation of the TOS, which states that AOL will not monitor or keep track of IM's! Big brother does whatever he wants.

If you have AOL, go to keyword: Webster's, and search on "member"....it says it all, form a tech's point of view...first line says something about a body part, and gives the example in caps as PENIS!!!!!

Not members, but associates, and yes. We were told to "wear our equity hats" (referring to keeping our stock price high) and never contradict the company no matter how much we knew they were lying about something. If they heard us saying something over the phone, we could be fired...no warnings, nothing. Talking to people that did get fired, since when a company fires someone they have to pay for it by paying more into Workmen's comp, etc, they started getting more than one coach to sign a statement stating that the person had been warned at least two times, when they hadn't been, to save AOL money. For people with children, that meant they could no longer receive unemployment benefits and were essentially screwed to the wall.

Jargon, sayings, focusing on manipulating the member, and little or no focus on solving their problems..that's the new AOL. Big brother. So there was a big incentive, unspoken but rewarded to lie. Since a good 1/4th of your compensation was by stock, and you had to stay a year to get it, and since they fired people as if there was no tomorrow just before those stock grant receiving deadlines (in September), there was a big incentive to shut up and just do it...whatever the company said. Towards the end, most people I knew were depending on drugs, pain pills, herbal remedies, drinking, smoking, promiscuous sex to get through the week..and towards the end, most of them weren't making it, either. how do you lie the same lie to people, to keep your call time low, telling them the same thing they've heard five times already, without feeling like shit and guilty?

"Has anyone challenged the abrasive rules you mentioned before?"

Nope...cuz all of a sudden, your customer SAT. scores will drop, and the things they grade you on, instead of being satisfactory will all of a sudden become unsatisfactory. AOL grades and demerits you on a lot of things, which aren't a problem until you tick someone off...then they become a huge issue.

"What was the final straw for you and your friends, if I may ask? Or was it just a buildup that went past a tolerance level?"

Buildup, watching lies and promises broken, destructive changes, and mostly, my friends being fired or quitting, almost all of them, in a two month period. From my roommate to people I met during training, they were getting clobbered with conflicting standards of what we were to do (help the member, solve his problem, telsave him, under 7.5 minutes), and most of us lost heart...I almsot lost it one day, and went outside to yell a little bit, just completely lost it...I've heard of associates who have lost it and just started screaming, until the guards came, took their badge and threw them out into the parking lot.

I was getting to that near the end...so I got my stock cashed in (took three weeks) and got out...felt like I'm sure a Jew would feel leaving on the eve of Hitler's takeover in Germany in 1933.....continual tension, and threats by management, never knowing what was happening..the place made me feel dehumanized...and I finally quit hoping things would work out and I quit.








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