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💌 From the Editor’s Desk
Where strategy decks go to retire, “alignment” is a spiritual practice, and innovation is whatever the consultant says it is this quarter.
This week, we’re tracking:
- A corporate initiative with the energy of a motivational screensaver
- The quiet power of laminated onboarding lies
- Why “This is how we’ve always done it” deserves its own Slack emoji
- And a visionary CEO who accidentally screen-shared his consultant budget spreadsheet mid-speech
If you’ve ever renamed a project just to get buy-in from someone who ignored it last time - welcome home.
Let’s get into it.
— The Mess
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📊Messy Metric of the Week
🎯 Unofficial Communication Audit
68% of “Let me circle back”s are tactical stall tactics—fired off in hopes you’ll forget the question, lose interest, or change jobs.
The other 32%? Sent while the sender frantically consults ChatGPT, Slack history, and the deepest folder of their brain labeled “Oh no.”
But here’s the twist…
📈 Gallup Workplace Report:
Only 7% of employees strongly agree that communication at their company is timely, transparent, and consistent.
Translation?
"Circling back" isn’t a plan. It’s a system failure in a trench coat.
The modern workplace doesn’t need more messaging—it needs meaning.
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📰Headline Shocker
Company Launches Initiative to Reinvent Wheel. Finds Previous Wheel. Uses That One Again.
Subtitle: "Project ‘Fresh Start’ Looks Shockingly Like Project ‘Reset’ (2022), Which Looked Exactly Like Project ‘Revamp’ (2021)"
By Work In ProgMess Staff Writer
April 29, 2025
NEW YORK, NY — In a bold affirmation of its deeply rooted fear of change, Capstone Synergistics has formally added “This Is How We’ve Always Done It” to its list of core values, alongside such stalwarts as “Excellence,” “Synergy,” and “Whatever Our Competitor Said Last Week.”
The announcement comes as part of the company’s latest initiative, Project Fresh Start, a sweeping internal campaign designed to repackage existing workflows with just enough flourish to seem new—while changing absolutely nothing.
“We’re not just repeating the past,” said Cheryl McAndrews, SVP of Visioning and Templates. “We’re honoring our legacy of repetition with a renewed sense of vigor.” Onboarding Now Includes a Nostalgia Module
Insiders confirm that new employees are now explicitly told, “This is how we’ve always done it,” within their first 72 hours. No further explanation is given. Questions are met with long pauses and phrases like, “It just works better this way,” and “That’s above your pay grade.”
“I asked why we still fax things,” said a recent hire in Operations. “They just nodded, handed me a laminated flowchart, and moved on.” “Trust the Process. Don’t Touch the Process. The Process Was Here Before You.”
"Change Is Hard, So We Didn't"
Despite framing itself as a company “leading the charge into the future,” leaked documents show 93% of Project Fresh Start materials were recycled from a 2018 folder labeled “Strategy_FINAL_FINAL_FOR_REAL_THIS_TIME.”
Sources report that five brainstorming sessions, two alignment summits, and one off-site at a Holiday Inn resulted in zero actual changes—except for the new initiative name and a motivational screensaver rollout featuring mountain ranges and the phrase “Do More Better.”
“We submitted 47 ideas,” said a product manager from the department now called ‘Product-ish.’ “They picked none, then asked us to make a deck explaining why innovation is one of our core values.” The initiative is expected to roll out in Q2, stall in Q3, and be quietly sunset in Q4 due to “shifting priorities.”
Executive Leadership Speaks (Unfortunately)
CEO Todd Gibbons shared his vision in a company-wide Teams broadcast.
“The future is bright,” Gibbons said, “and if we want to keep up, we need to double down on what got us here—familiarity, fear of the unknown, and the same five vendors we’ve used since 2012.” He then described the new vision as “like agile, but calmer,” before accidentally sharing his screen, revealing a spreadsheet labeled “Consultant Budget – Double It.xlsx.”
As of press time, the company had announced a town hall to “lean into the next chapter,” which will be moderated by the same consultant who led last year’s session on “rethinking synergy.”
Employees are encouraged to attend, submit pre-approved questions in advance, and pretend they’re learning something new.
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💡The Sports Page
📰 Edwards Edges Out Chaos in Wild Finish at Work In Progmess Spring Invitational
Footnote-Fueled Letter of Recommendation Hunt Leaves Field Dazed
By Staff Writer, Work In Progmess Sports Bureau
April 23, 2025 — In what experts are calling “the most cutthroat hunt for subtext since the 2014 Passive-Aggressive Holiday Card Games,” the Work In Progmess Spring Invitational wrapped up Wednesday with a letter of recommendation so loaded with corporate politeness, you could use it to season a rotisserie chicken.
Held annually in a fully fabricated tradition that started yesterday, the Invitational asks participants to comb through deceptively earnest letters of recommendation and identify buried red flags, performance landmines, and carefully-worded compliments that should never be said out loud.
This year’s event featured a letter from one Danielle Holbrook, Senior Director of Brand & Strategy, who described a former employee—Taylor J. Edwards—with phrases like “remarkable growth,” “unique perspective,” and “passionate about learning,” each of which was later decoded by analysts to mean, respectively: needed a lot of help, started arguments with fonts, and absolutely required supervision.
“We were seeing things like ‘benefits from a dynamic environment,’ which in sports terms is the equivalent of saying ‘plays best without teammates or referees,’” said commentator Jenna Tilson. “It’s elite-level dodge phrasing.” Fans especially praised the poetic ambiguity of the closing line:
“Taylor would be a valuable asset to organizations seeking innovative thinkers who aren’t afraid to take initiative and embrace ambiguity.” “Read: a loose cannon with a Slack profile,” said one judge, who requested anonymity because she might need a recommendation letter one day.
🥇 The Hidden Highlights
- "With the right mentor" ie. she can't do it on her own
- "Next chapter will be one of meaning growth" - she has a long way to go
- "Often approaches problems from unconventional angles" ahem... she doesn't really have the skills expected for this role
📬 The Reader Challenge
Now it’s your turn.
Can you write a footnote-worthy fake line from a letter of recommendation?
Something that sounds like a compliment, but is really a cry for help.
Reply to this issue or send your entry to info@workinprogmess.ai. The top five will receive:
- Public glory aka bragging rights
- A mystery bonus that may or may not involve a certificate printed on actual paper**
**Okay fine it's 100% a pdf
Stay tuned for next week’s event...
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📰Unhinged List
Top 10 LinkedIn Posts That Should Be Federal Crimes
Subpoenaed by: The Department of Social Media Crimes Against Humanity
LinkedIn: the only place where people humblebrag about doing CPR on a squirrel and call it "leadership."
It was supposed to be a professional network. A sacred space to share work wins, ask for mentorship, and maybe—just maybe—get a job. Instead, it has become a digital soapbox where personality goes to get strangled by buzzwords and forced vulnerability.
Let’s put some of these posts under citizen’s arrest.
1. “I Was Laid Off at 9 AM. By 11 AM, I Had a Job Offer. Here’s How I Manifested It.”
Crime: Speedrunning trauma for clout.
Sentence: 30 days of offline reflection and a mandatory journaling retreat.
2. “My 4-Year-Old Said ‘Mommy, You’re a Leader.’ So I Promoted Her to CMO of Our Household.”
Crime: Weaponizing toddlers for personal brand building.
Sentence: One week in a playroom with actual 4-year-olds and no Wi-Fi.
3. “I Was Rejected From 187 Jobs. Today, I’m Starting My Dream Role at Google.”
Crime: Romanticizing unemployment like it's a montage in a sports movie.
Sentence: Must personally respond to all 187 ghosted candidates in your pipeline.
4. “A Homeless Man Gave Me Career Advice Today. And He Was Right.”
Crime: Using real human suffering as a quirky life lesson.
Sentence: Six months volunteering with zero posting privileges.
5. “I Don’t Usually Post, But…”
Crime: You DO usually post. We’ve seen you.
Sentence: Must start every post with “I post constantly, and I’m back again.”
6. “We Don’t Talk Enough About [Thing We Talk About Constantly].”
Crime: Gaslighting the timeline.
Sentence: 500 hours reviewing everything ever posted with that same phrase. Blindfolded.
7. “Just Signed a $7M Deal While Hiking Mount Kilimanjaro With No Wi-Fi. #Grindset”
Crime: International business flex with fictional realism.
Sentence: Climb Kilimanjaro again. This time with actual Wi-Fi and five daily Zooms.
8. “I Hired Someone With a Gap in Their Résumé. Be More Like Me.”
Crime: Fishing for applause with the lowest bar imaginable.
Sentence: Must hire only imperfect humans for a year—and no posting about it.
9. “I Said ‘No’ to a Client. And They Thanked Me.”
Crime: Hallucinated boundary-setting story.
Sentence: Read every comment asking, “Did this really happen?” aloud to your mirror.
10. “This is what leadership looks like. [Photo of coffee, sneakers, or office dog.]”
Crime: Vagueposting with vibes.
Sentence: 10 years in a leadership workshop taught entirely by golden retrievers.
⚖️ Closing Argument:
LinkedIn shouldn’t be the Coachella of performative professionalism.
It shouldn’t feel like you need a ghostwriter, a ring light, and a child actor to update your network.
And it definitely shouldn’t make you feel bad for not inventing a startup while fostering orphans and running an ultramarathon.
Let’s bring the internet back to sanity. One fake promotion story at a time.
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🤝 Bad Advice from DMs
Applicant’s Carefully Worded DM Turns Into Emotional Hostage Situation in Under 3 Messages
“Just circling back again... and again... and forever.”
NEW YORK, NY — What began as a professional outreach DM from job seeker Ashley L., 27, quickly unraveled into a digital case study in slow-motion dread, sources confirmed Monday.
“Hi [Name], I’ve been following your work for a while and really admire your career path,” Ashley wrote at 9:16 AM, feeling confident about the message she’d rewritten 14 times and peer-reviewed with two friends and ChatGPT.
When the message received no reply by 2:41 PM, Ashley followed up with:
“Hi again! Just bumping this up in case it got lost. Totally understand if you’re busy!”
(Translation: I’ve been rejected before and I’ll be rejected again but I still believe in miracles.)
By 4:12 PM, the tone had shifted.
“Haha hope this isn’t annoying! Just really excited about learning from you and maybe even shadowing you sometime? :)” The smiley face, sources confirm, was added after extensive internal debate.
📉 THE ESCALATION
By Day 2, Ashley’s DMs included:
- An unsolicited résumé attachment
- A meme (that may have been intended as a joke)
- “No worries if not! Just wanted to say thanks either way. Big fan.”Followed 2 minutes later by:“Unless...?”
📣 RECRUITER RESPONSE
When reached for comment, the recipient of the messages—a senior strategist named Greg—admitted he saw the initial DM but “forgot to respond because it didn’t seem urgent and also I was scared.”
“I was just going to say yes to the coffee chat,” Greg said.
“But then there were like… six messages. And a TED Talk-length thank-you. And I panicked.”
🧠 EXPERT TAKE
According to workplace communication analyst Dr. Mira Jordan, this behavior falls under what she calls “Professional Ghostbusting.”
“It’s the act of trying to resuscitate a connection that was never alive to begin with,” Jordan explained. “Usually includes three emojis, multiple reassurances, and one final plea disguised as gratitude.” Ashley has since archived the thread, muted the conversation, and is considering a rebrand.
“I might just start fresh with a new profile,” she said. “Or pivot industries. Or disappear entirely. TBD.”
Meanwhile, Greg has since responded. His message read:
“Sorry for the delay—just saw this! Would love to connect sometime soon. Maybe Q4?” Sources confirm that “Q4” is code for “never,” but Ashley has already drafted her reply.
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📩Until Next Time…
Before You Close the Tab...
Here’s your weekly reminder:
🚫 Rebranding a broken system is not innovation. It’s ✨PowerPoint cosplay✨.
🪑 You are allowed to question the process, even if the process has a chair at the executive table.
🗂️ If your new initiative looks suspiciously like a folder from 2018—you're not behind. You're just observant.
And if this issue made you laugh, wince, or whisper “oh no” at your screen, forward it to:
- a teammate who’s currently leading Project Phoenix
- a manager who renamed a workflow and called it transformation
- or that one friend who calls every brainstorm a “vision sprint”
Help them unlearn. Or at least mildly disturb their confidence in the new OKRs.
You made it. Which means one of the following is true:
a) You genuinely love this newsletter
b) You’re procrastinating on a slide deck named "FreshStart_v4.pptx"
Either way,
—The Progmess Editorial Team
P.S. Here's your reward at The Bitter End. (One of these humans is one of our human's favorite actor human)
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