After a six-month trial period, it is with heavy hearts and even wetter shoes that the company has decided to end its Mentor-Manatee Program.
As you will recall, our Mentor-Manatee Program began as the result of an autocorrect error that was noticed only after we had flooded the accounting department. We nonetheless remained committed to helping young sea cows establish career goals as they daily consumed up to 15 percent of their body weight in aquatic plants.
We are deeply proud of the program’s accomplishments. Our young manatees showed more confidence, achieved targets for reaching 900 pounds, and demonstrated a clear aptitude for human resources. We are especially pleased to announce that one of our program participants was recently named one of “30 Under 30 Feet of Water.” (Best of luck, Bubbles!)
Unfortunately, our program was not without its issues. The flooding of the accounting department put considerable strain on our infrastructure, as did transporting our manatee interns to and from the parking lot each day. While the company celebrates the differently abled, installing the block-and-tackle system outside the building to hoist the manatees up several floors was quite costly. The daily process also involved considerable manpower, which reduced productivity and triggered complaints, particularly from our displaced accountants who were the first to admit they were not up to the task of manatee hoisting.
Similarly, one of the goals of the Mentor-Manatee Program was to encourage our candidates to step out of their comfort zones. The stepping out was the first issue, manatees being equipped with a large, paddle-shaped tail in lieu of feet. Secondly, the comfort zone in question was the flooded accounting department. When the young manatees did “step” outside their comfort zone, they tended to thrash about on the marketing floor, ruining several office chairs, one Xerox printer, and Sheila Fripp’s retirement party.
While we came to love our friendly interns, they struggled to overcome their natural solitary tendencies. Specifically, our manatees rarely took advantage of networking opportunities and never once turned on their cameras during Zoom meetings.
For our part, we admittedly fell short in assigning tasks to our manatees, given their predilection for sleeping half the day submerged for 20 minutes at a time and spending up to seven hours grazing for aquatic plants, which, again, do not come cheap. A naturally curious species, some of our candidates did express an interest in bookkeeping but were unfortunately unable to manage even basic Excel tasks due to a 100 percent lack of fingers.
Finally, it was a challenge for us to even find candidates willing to enter our Mentor-Manatee Program, given that manatees are an endangered species and rarely on LinkedIn.
For all these reasons, we have decided to end our program. As our interns go back to the wild and our accountants return to their natural habitat, we wish our manatees the best of luck in all their aquatic-plant-eating endeavors.
We would also like to thank our mentors for “taking the plunge” to nurture our young manatees. When you consider that human activity is the main cause of manatee fatality, we can all be proud that not a single intern died during this six-month project (notwithstanding the unfortunate paper shredder incident; get well soon, Ethel Mermaid!).
Rest assured that the company remains committed to providing programs that will support those who are venturing forth in the early stages of their careers. With that in mind, we encourage you to take advantage of our latest initiative by volunteering to become a lice coach.