A necessary evil?

There's one department in head office I am very torn about. It's called "Internal communications" and they generally issue articles and new on the Intranet, the physical corporate news magazine among other things.

The job of that department is basically that of propaganda. Telling us how great it is to work for our little company and what exciting things are going on. Sometimes things are not going that well and some measures need to be taken and internal communications is the department that takes the lead in this. My view of them is something of a propaganda department in the style of Nazi Germany or the Stalinist Soviet Union. They want to make the company think in a certain way and utilizes the communication channels they have at their disposals.

However, despite what you think due to what I compared them to above, they usually consists of some of the nicest people in the company. Usually very very friendly and really curious on what actually is going on, however, since they're sitting back at head office they're usually very disconnected to what's actually going on in the sales companies and what we're up against on a daily basis. If this was WW1 and I was deep in the trenches waiting for the next round of mustard gas to come down on me, these would be the people leaving a stack of leaflets in the trench, talking about how the next version of gas masks, that will be delivered in a year, will feature an improved design.

Last week there was an article up there which had a sub-heading reading "Inventory - A Necessary Evil". Please suck on that for a bit. For me, working in a sales company, inventory is something we need to have to be able to supply our customers with the products they need, when they need it. Sure, it costs money if it's just sitting there, but I never considered it an "evil". But perhaps I was wrong, perhaps the inventory is just sitting there scheming, making up its evil plans, but I have to accept it because I need it to supply the customers.

My views on inventory has been significantly altered, no longer will I go inte the company warehouse alone or unarmed...

(Bonus points if you can name the person in the picture, probably one of the most despicable persons in the history of man and of course has nothing to do with the lovely people in my corporate communications!)