M&M

I take great pride in telling you that our middle managers are paid EXACTLY what they're worth.
Reginald Howell, Founder and CEO of Hegemony International

M

&Ms are the middle managers of Hegemony International. Although they comprise both men and women, and they have slight distinctions in their personalities and presentation, they are all genetic clones of a single individual.

All M&Ms share the same last name: Smith. However, no two M&Ms share the same first name. For this reason, they are often referred to solely by their first name.

Career Stagnation

M&Ms are never promoted out of middle management. There are some corporate divisions that feature multiple layers of middle management. As such, it's possible for one M&M to report to another. However, Hegemony draws a clear distinction between "middle" management versus "executive" management - and M&Ms are never promoted into executive management.

They are also never demoted into the ranks of frontline employees or lower-level management. If an M&M fails in their duties to the extent that they would be considered for demotion - they are simply terminated. Outside of Hegemony International, an M&M's job prospects are extremely limited. The outside world knows that they are clones and they're considered to only be useful as part of Hegemony's corporate structure. This leads to an astronomical suicide rate amongst any M&Ms who've been released from the company. However, such events are rare.

Human Buffers

The ubiquitous use of M&Ms presents a sort of chasm that isolates the company's front-line employees from the top (executive) management. Although it's theoretically possible for a frontline employee, or someone in lower management, to be promoted to the executive level, it's exceedingly difficult to accomplish since it requires leapfrogging the entire intermediate layer of M&Ms. For this reason, most of Hegemony's executive management are hired directly into the company at the executive level.

Career

Qualifications

G

iven that all M&Ms are spawned as clones by Hegemony Labs solely to serve as middle management in Hegemony International, there are no "qualifications" for being an M&M. No one who is not a Hegemony-raised clone is ever considered for a position in the company's middle management. And these clones are never considered for any position within the company other than middle management.

One World Academy

Any "qualifications" they possess are drilled into them from birth. Once they reach traditional school age, they are all routed through the company's internal training institution - One World Academy. Once they've completed this education, they are immediately placed as middle managers in the company. Presumably, everything they need to know to be effective middle managers was imbued upon them during their years in the Academy.

Career Progression

T

hey possess few opportunities for any type of "career advancement". In larger divisions, it's possible for there to be multiple layers of M&Ms. Thus, the most exemplary of the group can achieve some degree of promotion that will have them overseeing other M&Ms. But it's impossible for M&Ms to ever rise into the executive ranks. There are a great many M&Ms who will live their entire lives in a single job at Hegemony - never rising, but also never falling.

Payment & Reimbursement

M

&Ms are paid a pittance compared to middle managers in other companies. Given that they rarely leave the compounds in which they work, they have little need (or desire, or... capacity) to spend money on houses, cars, baubles, vacations, or other amenities of normal human life.

Other Benefits

Hegemony International provides. What else would I possibly have to complain about?
Tailyn Smith, M&M with Hegemony International

T

he outward justification for paying M&Ms so poorly is the fact that most of their daily needs are provided, free-of-charge, by the company. Almost all of them reside in company-constructed living quarters, located in the compucombs. These quarters are fully furnished, and outfitted with some niceties such as computers, gaming systems, televisions, etc. They're given free meals in the corporate cafeterias.

Childless

All M&Ms are sterile, so they have no need for childcare and they incur none of the expenses common to all parents. When they fall ill, medical care is provided via LifeSupport. Unlike the company's "normal" employees, M&Ms are never billed for this care. (And if they were, they wouldn't have the funds necessary to pay those bills anyway.)

While these putative "benefits" have been derided by human rights activists as scant comfort provided for a de facto slave labor force, M&Ms never seem to mind and are generally satisfied with their lot. Such is the consequence of being indoctrinated by Hegemony from the moment of their birth.

Perception

Purpose

R

eginald Howell is not shy about his disdain for middle management - at least, as it exists in the rest of the corporate world. He views the world's population of middle managers as an inefficient, ineffective, and distasteful drain on corporate profits. As such, he's ecstatic with his company's use of cloned M&Ms.

Paper Pushers

Although an M&M's duties may vary significantly from one division to the next, they're ostensibly in place to serve all of the mundane tasks one would typically associate with middle management. They file reports. They oversee performance reviews. They espouse company policy. They approve time-off requests and authorize moderate expenditures.

Those who've spent substantial time within Hegemony would also attribute another purpose to the M&Ms. They serve as a "buffer" between frontline workers and executive management.

Social Status

W

ithin Hegemony International, M&Ms are not exactly embraced, but neither are they reviled. While most employees do not appreciate (or respect) the M&Ms in their chain-of-command, they also see them as something of a "necessary evil". Although middle management in other companies are certainly not clones, those who've worked outside Hegemony experience the same frustrations with M&Ms that they did when they were working under "normal" human paper pushers.

Public Revulsion

Outside the company, the public status of M&Ms is far more dubious. The general population sees this cloned workforce as being inherently creepy. Those with a more liberal bent also tend to see Hegemony's legion of cloned M&Ms as a human rights violation. For these reasons, M&Ms rarely venture outside the boundaries of their primary corporate campus.

If our M&M quotes one more passage from the annual report, I'm gonna print it out and shove it down his throat.
Kristo Kettunen, Building Security with Hegemony International

Corporate Mouthpieces

M&Ms do inspire some degree of annoyance amongst the workforce due to the fact that they're exceedingly awkward. Although One World Academy does make some attempt to school them in the broader nuances of the outside world, their lack of social graces and their disconnection from many aspects of pop culture makes them seem isolated, discomforting, and nerdy. This perception is further exacerbated by their gleeful embrace of everything related to Hegemony's corporate culture.

History

T

he first generation of M&Ms was deployed by Hegemony in 2025. Since then, there's been a steady stream of new M&Ms, graduating from One World Academy, and deployed directly into the corporation's middle management structure. The last "regular" middle manager (meaning: a normal non-cloned human, hired from the general populace) was jettisoned from the company in 2049.

Alternative Names

Manager, Middle Management

Type

Administration / Management

Used By

• Hegemony International