On my way to work today I read [source] the following critique of Workplace 2000, a sample of late 90's business literature, which I thought merited sharing:

"Consider Wal-Mart purchaser John Love, who accidentally ordered five times too many Moon Pies for his Alabama store:

It was a stupid mistake that could have gotten Love fired if he had worked for any of a number of other companies. Not at Wal-Mart. Love's boss just told him: "Use your imagination, be creative and figure out a way to sell it." Love did. He created the first World Championship Moon Pie Eating Contest and held it in the store's parking lot. The contest and the promotion were so successful for the company that it is now held on an annual basis and draws thousands of spectators...

Thus capitalism confronts the specter of postindustrial malaise. As strip-mall revelers fall upon the heaps of faintly toxic snack treats, another tiny crisis of overproduction is transformed into a miracle of overconsumption through the Stakhanovite exertions of a lone-hero salesman. We recognize here a drama of disgrace, forgiveness, and ultimate triumph, revolving around a few primordial themes: trust between supervisor and supervised; the redemptive metamorphosis of clerk into salesman and his centrality in creating a community of consumers; and the community's effort to preserve itself through the yearly reenactment of its foundation epic. And so this spare but exquisite passage from business literature articulates the core motifs of present day corporate ideology, even as it skirts the basic economic issues of efficiency and product quality. It doesn't question the need to manufacture Moon Pies, nor the wisdom of eating a great quantity of them. Instead, with the ancient sonorities of ritual and myth, it infuses sacred meaning into the making and selling of pure junk."