Onboarding

The eyes scanned ambitiously the perfect contrasting text on the screen. Above the 12 bullet points, the heading read mighty: "Welcome to your first steps in your journey to become the perfect employee. Step 2: Core values" and a small italic subheading: "Click on each Value to learn more".

Tiiiny photons from the monitor hit retinas and electrical signals were sent to some lobe or cortex inside the brain to make sense of the text, at the same time as, tiiiny cameras sent electrical signals to microchips and microcontrollers that sent a gazillion bytes to a posy of programs that tracked, analyzed and recorded every single facial queue of the would be perfect employee.

Eyes involuntarily jumped to the red and green progress bar. The green bit of the bar is scarily small compared to the red part. A small label indicates an estimation time of 60h to completion, but is was suggested that the whole process "really should be done in the first week". "Elbow grease" and "dedication" were some terms thrown in with the same suggestion.

Now the plot thickens, because, you see, that little side adventure, with the estimation and progress bar, was very eagerly detected, interpreted and logged as a "62% loss of focus" event.

And that is bad. On the big machines, in the big data warehouse, some very clever servers are listening and hungrily waiting for a event just like that. In a matter of milliseconds, countless services and controllers take action to register the 62% chance of loss of focus in countless databases, datasets and datalakes and, of course, send automated emails to compliance, governance and HR. Finally, a response is given back to the little laptop that detected the event.

Precisely 969 ms after the eyes stared at that progress bar, they are now staring at a screen wide orange popup. In a very well studied and long debated about font, it warns the reader: "A temporary loss of focus was detected. Please concentrate on the task at hand. Further deviation will cause the process to start again".

Nostrils flare and take in a gulp of not so fresh office air. Mouth lets out a repressed sigh and with a flick of a fingertip the scary orange popup is dismissed.

The reading resumes with renewed vigor. Once again the eyes are sending precious information to cortices and lobes, only this time other cortices and squishy parts of the brain jump into action and thoughts start to form - deep thoughts; thoughts about failure and unemployment, about disappointed family and friends and ...

Precisely 969ms later the deep thoughts were sent away by a menacing BONG.

A big red alert was centered on screen and proudly announced to the reader that: "We detected a 100% loss of focus. This incident has been reported to your supervisor. Company core principles are the basis for your personal and professional growth and your undivided attention is needed during the onboarding".

An exquisitely rounded button blinks its message at flawless intervals: "Click here to begin your journey".