Consulting Life: 30 Funny Memes About Work, Burnout And Clients

We were curious to find out why 'Consulting Comedy' had become such a smash hit on the internet over the years. The founder of the project shed some light on this. According to them, the memes that they post are often raw, savage, and "cut the corporate veil and censorship."

These memes embody the things that many people think but most often don't say at work.

On top of that, the content posted by the 'Consulting Comedy' team is very shareable, "often among colleagues, but also with people outside the industry who can relate to the struggles of the everyday grind, the unsatisfied boss, and the thankless management and clients."

Bored Panda wanted to know what someone should keep in mind if they're considering a career in consulting. According to the curator of the page, they should be careful what they're signing up for.

"Consulting is like buying a boat. You're the happiest the day you get the offer and the day you quit. Everything in between is the firm stretching you like an elastic, hoping that it doesn't snap," they said.

The 'Consulting Comedy' project was founded back in 2017 as an outlet to expose the reality of working in consulting. One of the founder's coworkers supported them in sharing their sarcasm on social media. Soon enough, the project went viral all across the internet.

Consulting is a slightly confusing term for a very straightforward concept. To put it simply, consulting firms consult other companies: they offer various specialized services. Other businesses pay them for that in-depth knowledge and know-how.

Consultancies can focus on providing expertise in numerous fields, from politics and management to investment, IT, human resources, marketing, engineering, etc.

While some consultancies choose to specialize in one particular field, others take a broader approach and offer more than one service. So if someone tells you that they’re a consultant, you probably should follow that up with a question about what kind of consulting work they actually do.

(Saying that you’re a consultant is similar to telling someone that you “listen to music” or you “like movies”... sure, that’s cool, but let’s narrow that down, shall we?)

The ‘Consulting Comedy’ project is a powerhouse on the internet. The odds are that, at some point in time, you’ve come across some of its posts in your favorite social media feeds.

The project has a whopping 622k followers on Instagram alone. The entire project started on Instagram, so it makes sense that it has the biggest following on that particular social network.

Meanwhile, the project also boasts 68.2k followers on X (formerly Twitter), 62k fans on LinkedIn, and 3.5k followers on Facebook. ‘Consulting Comedy’ has also recently launched a dedicated YouTube channel. It can also be found on Threads, which is Meta’s (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) answer to Elon Musk’s purchase of the social media network X.

According to the curators, the project was launched as a platform to bring positivity to the workplace with the help of humor and satire. However, comedy isn’t the only thing that ‘Consulting Comedy’ does. It has branched out in what it does since its inception back in February 2018.

“Since then [the launch], we helped consultants and other professionals by also providing deep insights about the industry through surveys and polls and also tried to leverage our position to shed light on sensitive and high-impact topics in the workplace, ranging across work-life balance, diversity, coping with stress, amongst others,” they share.

Consulting firms work by looking at the goals that their clients (aka businesses) want to reach and coming up with strategies to do this. For example, a company might be looking to expand (to maximize profit) or to restructure (to reduce losses).

While businesses can do these things themselves, it’s a question of whether or not it’s worth it to outsource (some of) that effort.

So, a particular company’s executives will get together and do some calculations about what’s the better approach for the business: doing an average job themselves or spending more money but getting specialized guidance from an expert in their given field.

That decision is going to vary depending on the company’s size, budget, goals in question, and range and depth of skills among the staff.

Comedian and beloved TV host John Oliver recently ripped into consulting firms on his show ‘Last Week Tonight.’ During a recent episode of the popular late-night show, Oliver criticized management consultancies and, in particular, McKinsey & Company.

The latter pulls in $15 billion (that’s ‘billion’ with a ‘b’) every year and has offices in over 65 countries. 

Among some of McKinsey’s clients are oil companies, Purdue Pharma (the maker of OxyContin), and the Saudi Government. The consultancy is known for mass layoffs—usually spun in PR-acceptable ways, such as “finding efficiencies” or “organizational streamlining.” 

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