Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson… is closing all Starbucks stores on May 29th for two hours to provide sensitivity training around unconscious bias. – Lee Carter, Fox Business
In response to the Starbucks program of sensitivity training, I, at Matt Nagin Enterprises, have created my own program, Insensitivity Training, that I’ve begun pitching to all Dunkin’ Donuts locations. This company was selected, in particular, since it is not known for particularly genial customer service reps, and, as such, I thought they might be more attuned to a no-holds-barred, rough-and-tumble-program held at my dingy, studio apartment.
Participants do not have to pay for the course – although if someone punches you in the face, stabs you in the jugular, puts your head in a vise, or institutes other tortures heretofore unmentioned I can in no way assume responsibility for your medical and psychological recovery. All are welcome to join provided they don’t interrupt and request any form of accommodation for any underrepresented group or wussy cause that is altogether irrelevant since the whole point of the training is toughen up you tofu-eating, gentle-as-a-baby’s-ass bitches and teach you to not give a flying fuck what judgmental, close-minded dipshits think. (Note: I will be using profanity throughout this description of my course offering since this is Insensitivity Training, and, well, let’s face it, part of the Dunkin’ Donuts milieu).
The first part of the course will revolve around language. You will actually be allowed to use it freely here. No half-stepping. Any horrible thing you want to say you will actually be allowed to say to your customers and they will have to sit there and shut up and will be happy to do so as well since they will have a chance to use any language they want right back at you.
This is called freedom of speech, something you will all need to learn a great deal about since it is has been completely abandoned and turned into a parody of itself since today a professional comedian can’t even tweet a silly little joke comparing a black woman’s face to a character on The Planet of Apes without it destroying her career. During training, will you be permitted to use the n-word? Of course! More than a gangster rapper on Ambien! And the c-word? You bet! More than a drunken Scot on a misogynistic rant! Plus – news flash – at Dunkin’ Donuts you can use any other goddamn word you choose. And why? First, because it’s Dunkin’ Donuts, so you expect to get cursed out in unflinching terms when you change your order from the Boston crème to the French cruller. And second, because language isn’t the problem. The response to it is the problem!
Too many companies out there have created an oppressive censorship model that shuts down controversial ideas out of paranoia that people will start believing them once uttered as if they are magic spells. This is utter shit. Language doesn’t create racism, or sexism, or any other goddamn -ism. And, even if it does, the most important thing in this torn, debilitated, pathetic country that is being shredded a little more every day is for people to start tolerating each other and accepting each other and that doesn’t start with censorship.
The second part of the course will involve physically getting your ass kicked. You will get jumped. You will get pistol-whipped. Someone will punch you in the nose. Another will bite your ankle. (Again, I cannot accept liability for this and, certainly, neither can Dunkin’ Donuts, who has not yet even agreed to allow me to teach this course.)
It will suck. But you know what? When it is all over you will realize these bastards out there with their backward ideas of what is what that they shove down your throat hook, line, and sinker can’t change you. They can’t get you to shut up. They can’t repress your ideas just because you are wearing a funny little paper hat and don’t feel like making their coffee with milk and two lousy Splendas. Plus, if you want to reply to a rude customer with a harangue of your own you should have every goddamn right to do so!
You are free. Actually free and not pretend free where if you say the wrong thing the media destroys you by taking what you say out of context and letting the outrage machine blow it up into this monstrous Frankenstein cretin that was not even what you intended in the first place.
You will not have to jump on the bandwagon with your co-workers when they are offended and glad-hand and nod your head and agree with total bullshit. You will not have to hide your ideas in the workplace. No. You will be out there in the open. Alive. And telling anyone who is offended to go fuck themselves.
Sure, when you do so, certain people will whine and bitch and start Facebook petitions against you and troll you on Twitter and try to publicly shame and humiliate you and maybe even post videos of your interaction on Snapchat, but at this point, you won’t give a damn since you’re working at Dunkin’ Donuts, the best goddamn company on the planet – a company that will stand behind you when you smash their phones and laugh in their righteous, Neanderthal, Stepford soul faces.
The third, and most important part of the training course, will involve you getting roasted by professional comedians who will mercilessly tear you to shreds. They will dig into your personal dramas. Deride your looks and your personality and your horrible sex life. They will shame and demean you in any way they can. And why? Because you need to learn that a joke is a joke is a joke. Customers will make them. This is a guarantee. But words cannot kill you. Employees today, like customers, are too often a bunch of self-entitled babies living in impeccable ivory towers that need to come crashing down. When you are really torn to shreds, when your guts are in the mud, then you will see that everyone should have a right to say whatever the hell they want and you will be okay in the end. Nothing should be off limits (so hurry up with my egg-and-cheese-wakeup wrap you fat pig, will you?).
Having completed this last part of the course, you will be ready for the real world, an insensitive, angry, foaming, misanthropic three-headed beast. A daring, anarchistic and anachronistic rebel who will not take any bullshit and will not play the game with the others just because it is economically convenient or satisfies a certain drive to seem superior with a kind of righteous indignation. In short, you will be ready to fight back.
To be a real human being and not a shill for some bullshit, pre-packaged ideology that has been crammed down your throat like it was produced for the assembly line by cultish, brainwashing dolts. Of course, if you are not a fan of this course, feel free to take the self-serving, Kafkaesque, backward-as-fuck-sensitivity-training offered at Starbucks.