NQP Labs Exploring Solutions to US Office Productivity

SCIENCE

No idea what it does but the people that built it must have been smart.

“NQP Labs is a research and development organization devoted to the extension of human knowledge through the investigation of the fundamental structures of the universe. Our efforts to expand the boundaries of science include research into diverse fields such as artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, dark matter, information theory, applied alchemy, bio-computing, low energy physics and internet memes.“

Since the inception of NQP Labs, our objective has been to produce some really gee-wiz impressive fundamental scientific breakthroughs while making enough useful, and yet mundane, inventions to continue our funding. Toward fulfillment of this second objective, NQP Labs has initiated a study into one of the most mundane topics possible – office worker ((Office workers are occasionally referred to as “knowledge workers” in the literature, but who are we trying to kid? If they were really knowledge workers, they would be in R&D or some other area where actual knowledge was required and not in an office. For that reason, and given our innate sense of superiority, we will refer to the subjects of this study as office workers and not knowledge workers.)) productivity.

A recent study (see “Researchers Identify Side Effects of LOLCAT Pandemic“) has brought to light what is quite possibly the greatest threat to America’s economic dominance since the introduction of Two-fer Tuesdays. Prior to the release of this study, most researchers in the field have been under the mistaken assumption that the underlying cause of workplace productivity decline was people using their computers to look at images and videos of naughty bits. As a result, most internet filtering schemes have targeted and banned search words such as ####, #######, ###, ####-#######, and of course, “naughty bits.” The effectiveness of these filtering schemes can be questioned, but it appears that there is at least anecdotal evidence that viewing images of people who are younger, more attractive, in better physical condition and / or more agile than yourself, is eventually too depressing to continue. Finally, the growing popularity of open office environments means that viewing naughty bits at work will get you quickly nominated as “most likely to receive a restraining order.” The conclusion we have reached is that this is not a significant factor in the recent decline in office worker productivity.

On the other hand, the recent research shows a definite correlation between office worker productivity and the viewing of LOLCATs. Solving this problem will be the task of a select team of engineers and scientists from NQP Labs. We expect to take a revolutionary approach rather than simply adopt strategies from existing tools that attempt to filter naughty bits. As a real R&D organization, our standards prevent us from simply copying other’s work ((Our standards fortunately don’t prevent us from making trivial alterations to someone else’s work and then applying for a dozen patents to give our lawyers something to work with.)). The idea of a LOLCAT filter, however, is unbroken ground and now that we have planted the seed, we will be putting our fertile minds to work. [ed.note – I’m really tempted to follow this whole farming metaphor with something about how upper management fertilizes everything when they come along and crap all over our work. On the off chance one of them will read this, I won’t include it as much as I’d like to.]

Watch this space for more news regarding our over-engineered solution to the problem of LOLCATs.

NQP Labs – We do Science Right.

 

photo by: chase_elliott

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