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Parody Alert! This article's subject matter is parodical and non-canon in nature (but distinct from hoax and serious fanon material) This material is generally fan-created, but occasionally from official or commercial sources.

Corporate mergers are a tricky thing - sometimes you end up with a company wholly owned by another, other times they're a subsidiary. There can be a stock swap, a spin-off, a merger, a hostile takeover or a really drunken office party where you wake up the next morning to find you are now part of UPN. Many ways exist in which many companies become one, one becomes many, many becomes many, and CEOs make a ton of money.

This holds true for the DHARMA Initiative as well. Funded by the Hanso Foundation, which itself has ties to Widmore, all of these have several areas of expertise. In short, there's quite a few companies tied into DHARMA, which leads one to wonder: Given their propensity for Crazy Mind Tricks, is it possible that you yourself work for DHARMA in some capacity?

Thankfully, there are a few subtle signs:

The Commute

• The drive to work strangely seems to take a variable amount of time, even though there are a very specific set of directions you must flawlessly execute to get there or you'll somehow end up back in your own driveway.
  • Conversely, you live at work and your office equipment doubles as your alarm clock.
  • Your dashboard compass is no help whatsoever in this matter.
• The local radio station strangely omits traffic for your region.
  • And why's it so darn hard to get a signal to begin with?
    • You're probably just wasting money on that cell phone, considering.
• While it's perfectly normal for employees of most organizations to complain about their parking lots being 'mazes', this should not literally be the case.
• They've moved your office.
• They've moved your building.
  • To another time zone.
    • Again.
• Your company vehicle is older than you are.

Policy

They pay you to be there, you're just not sure why

• Each office is assigned a name and a graphic representing it. They've long since ran out of good ones, though. You work in The Calendar.
  • Still, you're better off than the people in The Stapler.
• They have not updated your computer since 1979. It only seems to accept numbers as input. An unseen coworker of yours keeps sending you messages calling you "Dad".
• Smoking is strictly prohibited, though the reason has never adequately been explained beyond some muttering about the Life Extension Project not being ready yet.
  • Not a whole lot goes adequately explained.
    • Some really interesting questions get asked, though.
• Every Incident, no matter how small, has a capital 'I' and requires a ton of paperwork and some sort of protocol. You don't know what this ends up being, exactly, but ever since the Paper Cut Incident of '02 and the resulting Bandage Request Protocol you're afraid to ask.

• It's also perfectly normal for employees of most organizations to claim that, by signing an employment contract, they are in effect giving up their firstborn son. You just wish the wording on your contract wasn't "We're going to have to take the boy".
• All the guys in the orientation videos look the same.
• The doors to the Mens room are decoys, leading to some rocks.
• If you perform your duties flawlessly, and manage to kill less than say, five people in the process, you get to retire with a nice boat as a gift. Heck, you may even get your first born back.
  • Your friends can come to your retirement party, but they will need to be bound and gagged -- for their own safety you see.
    • Oh, and only the approved friends on the list, no more, no less.
• You've been dutifully filing your reports and memos for weeks, but nobody ever comments on them.
• Every 108 minutes, the corporate network starts acting up. Nobody knows why, but pressing the reset button seems to fix it.
• The elevators in your building only go to either the even numbered floors, or the odd numbered floors. Nobody knows why, and when you ask the psychology department, they just ask you how this makes you feel.
• Every e-mail, web page, memo, text file, calendar, lunch menu, evacuation instruction, and sticky note must contain at least three secret messages.
  • .sdrawkcab gnihtyreve gnitirw tsuj yb ssecorp eht denilmaerts ev'uoY
• Your employee orientation video was a long, loud montage of nonsensical images with cryptic text overlaid, set to heavy techno music. HR claims a 100% satisfaction rate, but you suspect this is because they have a captive audience.
• You screwed up so badly on your last employee evaluation that you got Marked.
  • At least it's not a pay cut. Though you can't really remember when your last paycheck cleared.
    • And they've never even brought up the possibility of transferring you out of your current position.
      • By the way, two screw-ups and they cut off an arm.
• Your job title is your first name, followed by your primary job and your gender. If, through some miracle, you actually manage to forget this, it's written on the front of the jumpsuit you have to wear.
• The "Suggestion Box" is actually a pneumatic pipe that deposits your suggestions in a large pile in the wilderness.

Co-workers

• It's been a very, very long time since you last talked with anyone assigned to a 'field site'. Maybe you should check in with them.
• You're getting a little tired of your co-workers' constant ability to know what card you have in your hand.
  • Playing poker is just impossible with these guys.
    • Go Fish is right out.
• Ever notice how strange the anagrams of these people's names are? It's getting somewhat awkward working next to the man you think of as "A CORN RINK QUIT PRY".
• You have strange dreams, which consist of your boss - apparently killed in a somewhat gruesome way - nonetheless telling you to show up on the weekend. When you do so, you find a new boss present. Nobody says a word about your old boss. Perhaps it's better you don't.
• Your workplace, for some reason, has a very active and very convincing theater group, but you never see playbills for them appear anywhere.
  • Your fake beard is itchy.
• Everyone in your office makes whispered and frightened references to the big boss of the organization using 'Him' instead of actual names.
  • Which is odd, because you think the CEO is a woman.
• You refer to your competition as "The Hostiles"
• The Psychology folks down the hall don't want to ask you 'how that makes you feel', they want you to want to be asked 'how that makes you feel'.
  • So how does that make you feel, anyway?
• Your company directory reads like a who's who of comparative philosophy.
• The person in the next cubicle bears a strange resemblance to your childhood imaginary friend.
  • This would explain their low productivity, though.
• Intra-company sports competitions have long been banned, thanks to the fact that The Others are really, really good at tag football.
  • Hey, what happened to your tag football team, anyway? It's been a while since anyone saw them.
    • They've all been scouted.
• Everyone, everywhere in the company, ends every single freaking speech with the word "Namaste".
  • You have to resist the urge to reply "Gesundheit".
    • Namaste.
      • Gesundheit. Oops.
• You are beginning to wonder why every computer in the company has a web cam attached.
  • The people you're watching via their web cams are beginning to wonder this, too.
    • And the quizzical expression they can see on your feed from your web cam isn't exactly reassuring.
• Though most people think chain-letters delivered via e-mails are corny at best, and the punishments they promise to inflict upon those who do not forward them unlikely, you nonetheless do so. In your line of work, curses are real.
  • Sometimes they even let you do the cursing!
• Your notebook is full.
  • Again.
• Your uniform is a jumpsuit with one zipper, which is stuck. And the knocking on the bathroom door is getting more insistent.
• If you're late punching in for work, the building self-destructs.

The Cafeteria

• It's taco night!
• The checkout clerk looks very familiar, almost identical to the man you remember from the Arby's Incident five years ago. It would explain why he adheres rigidly to the sandwich-ordering protocol.
• Once a week or so, everyone's doors lock while the vendors restock. It seems a bit of an over-reaction to the "people wasting time talking to the Nozz-A-La folks" Incident
  • Strangely, it was about the time this started that the cafeteria employees began referring to your purchases as 'air drops'.
• It's probably a violation of monopoly law to have this much DHARMA brand food in stock. What the heck happened to the Subway they were supposed to put in?
  • Oh, right, the Jenkins Incident. That's why you have to line up at the ferry for your food now.
    • I mean, adhere to the Submarine Sandwich Importation Protocol.
      • Who'd have thought they'd use real submarines?
• Ordering a meal requires you to select a meal via using a lever, a pedal, and finally pressing a button. Failure to do this correctly can be... painful.
  • You taste like fish biscuit.
    • FISH BISCUITS ARE SOYLENT GREEN!
    • Which, incidentally, IS PEOPLE!
• The one shred of good news is that DHARMA Initiative Cola is preferred four times out of five over whatever the hell is in that other unmarked cup.

Advice

You're now aware that, like every other person on the planet, you work in some capacity for the DHARMA Initiative. What precautions should you take so that you don't end up like Dr. Marvin "My last name has to do with fire because I keep getting set on it" Candle? Just keep these in mind:

• Under no circumstances should you attempt to get transferred to another office. As you're probably not currently dead or in any more dire peril than anyone else, it's safest to remain where you are.
  • When you somehow get transferred to another office, usually without you even knowing that this has happened, immediately read every workplace safety report you can find. This will make you look busy, and the work of manually extinguishing the Bonfire project can go to someone else.
    • Avoid the temptation to tape over the orientation films with Loony Tunes.
• Try not to get a pacemaker installed. Electromagnets can wreak havoc with those.
• Try not to appear in any orientation videos. It's bad luck, because they make you change your name to some cover-term which will ironically come to suit you.
  • When you somehow end up in an orientation video, try to pick a good name. "Larry the Babe Magnet" is suitable, so long as this magnetism is figurative. "Bear-Trap Bob" is, similarly, a poor choice.
• That conference they're offering to send you to in Sydney? Yeah, you should pass on that.
  • Anywhere you go, offers of beach front property are to be treated with suspicion. Where you work, this goes double.