The Fictional Zombies:
Zombies are fictional creatures, typically depicted as mindless, reanimated human corpses with a hunger for human flesh. In popular culture, zombies are people who have died and been reanimated as mindless, nearly invulnerable monsters that band together and attack the living. They are also known as “the living dead,” “the walking dead,” or “the undead.” Not to mention, the first time I saw zombies they were dancing in sync with music in the video “Thriller”, which scared the breakfast out of me.
Though many people are familiar with zombies from horror movies, TV shows, and video games, their history dates back hundreds of years, to stories in Haitian Voodoo folklore. In the Haitian culture, there are hundreds of stories of people dying and being brought back to life by a witch doctor. The reawakened person has no awareness of who he used to be.
Zombies did not gain a strong presence in American popular culture, however, until the 1968 release of George A. Romero’s classic horror film, The Night of the Living Dead. The film featured slow-moving, violent, cannibalistic zombies, and many critics believe that it sparked a new era in horror film-making.
The Real Zombies:
If you didn’t already know there ARE real zombies out there; real walking dead, flesh eating, moaning, slow moving monsters. Imagine you are one of the rare self-motivated people at work who is truly there to accomplish big audacious goals that would make a significant difference.
You work your fingers to the bone and don’t care because the work itself is making you happy. Over time your work environment is more and more inundated with people who are just running through the motions. They don’t have any plans for the future and seem to be stuck in a rut which some call a grave with the ends kicked out. You look around and it looks like people are just sleep walking. They are the “walking dead”.
You can hear them doing their daily tasks. Instead of having a positive attitude, you can hear them grunting and moaning as they do their daily tasks, “arrrrrrrrrrrrrr”. It definitely sounds like they are in authentic pain. It’s self-imposed pain, but pain none the less.
Like movie zombies, they eat living flesh. They eat the flesh of positivity, innovative ideas, and enthusiasm. They crave and consume the good intentions of decent employees by ensuring that no good deed goes unpunished by pointing out faults, leading the campaign of why things won’t work, and shouting “nah” from the sidelines. They refuse to listen to reason and become very combative and angry when anyone tries to shake them out of their negative slumber.
Just like you would expect, they are very contagious. When you notice the first zombie, you better watch out. As they continue on, they will bite others converting them into part of them zombie mob. Once bitten the change is slow, but inevitable starting in their eyes. They twinkle they once had has burned out and is replaced with a distant dull look. The pain of being a zombie begins and the only thing that will satisfy this new hunger is to eat live flesh of enthusiasm employees.
What to do about zombies:
Isolate and medicate with truthful feedback and a game plan to get back to their former living positive self.