Groublogpon – The Serious Blog of Groupon

Groupon employees are all about self-expression—especially when they’re expressing themselves within the sanctioned self-expression outlets prescribed to them on their first day. Among the most popular techniques is cubicle decoration, and among the most popular cubicle decorations are the following:

• Mini poster of cat clinging to a baby, with caption reading “Hang on to that baby!”
• Dilbert-Calendar-of-the-Day Day Calendar featuring a different classic Dilbert Day Calendar every calendar day
• One of those little cactuses. Cacti? Cactuses.
• Autographed photo of your family
• Toys? At work? I think I’m going to like it here.

At the bottom of each Daily Groupon feature, users can find Groupon the Cat, slouching majestically across a cloud of pure wisdom. Groupon dispenses ancient truisms that still have relevance to our modern lives, as evidenced by today’s entry:

The “Quiet Period” is the time right before a company “goes public,” during which it is legally prohibited from saying anything to the press that may make the company look “good,” “successful,” or “not currently on fire.” During this sensitive time, it is the duty of the press to force the adolescent company through a series of brutal hazing rituals, designed to desensitize it to public criticism. This tough love helps the naively optimistic company to thicken its skin, atrophy its soul, and finally grow up into a real corporation. Here are some traditional hazing rituals you can use to torture companies in a quiet period:

• Wait until the company is sleeping to smear scream-activated bees on its face. Lesson Learned: Don’t believe your company’s own “buzz.”

• Photoshop the company’s logo to appear to be shaking hands with James Buchanan, America’s worst president. Lesson Learned: Everything you see or read about a company is true, if it’s on a computer.

• Use the company’s cell phone to text a vote for the new M&M’s color to be a sickly ashen gray. Lesson Learned: Customers aren’t capable of making their own decisions.

• Kick sand in the company’s face. Lesson Learned: If the company survives, it’s time to move on to sand’s close relative, powdered glass.

• Write disparaging articles about the company. Lesson Learned: That’s what they get for trying to be a company.

Our editorial department brings you yet another installment of “Behind the Deals” on this very Wednesday.

Groupon is testing the veracity of the old adage “You’ve got to spend money to make money” by spending a bunch of money and then seeing if it cytogenetically divides into new money. The company has an entire business-development department dedicated to finding new and creative ways to turn a profit. Their recent projects include:

• Burying a burlap sack filled with gold coins behind the office to see if it sprouts into a dollar tree
• Catching fish for a hundred men, teaching another hundred men how to fish, doing nothing for a control group of a hundred men, and then comparing their yearly salaries/amount of fish caught after six months
• Boosting worker productivity by giving every employee a high-tech cyber-typewriter called a “compute-ter”
• Introducing Super Groupons that charge double a product or service’s value instead of half
• By reading this sentence, from now on even just thinking about a Groupon is a legally binding agreement that you will purchase it. Thanks!