Well, there's why the school system never changes.note
The purpose of a suggestion box is so employees can enter their ideas for how to make the workplace better/more enjoyable for them. They can ask for things like altered work hours, what foods to put in the vending machines or serve in the cafeteria, and/or what days can be casual dress day at work. For the Mean Boss, though...
It's pretty much when a suggestion box is present in a work area or business, but is treated as a joke. Employees or customers can put all the suggestions in it they want, but the business doesn't take them seriously. They may throw them out without reading them, shred them, make fun of them, or even punish those who made suggestions. This establishes just how much of a Mean Boss those in charge of the business are, not caring about the happiness of the employees, even when it could actually help with productivity (happy employees are motivated employees, after all) or the opinions of their customers.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Old Master Q: One comic strip has Big Potato dropping a suggestion form in a shop office's suggestion box. Just then, noticing an employee coming to collect the box, Big Potato decides to observe behind a corner... only to see the employee emptying the box into a trash can.
- Overlord: Ainz installs a genuine suggestion box in Nazarick because his image as an infallible Supreme Being means that people are too afraid to approach him with complaints. He also uses it to anonymously submit his own ideas when he's not completely certain that Albedo and Demiurge will like them. However, Albedo seems to think he installed the box to weed out the traitors who would dare claim his rule is inadequate, and the first anonymous suggestion Ainz submits makes her so angry that she goes on a spiteful rant about how stupid it is.
Comic Books
- Gaston Lagaffe:
- One strip
has a coworker put an idea in the suggestion box, followed by Gaston revealing it hides a garbage chute and dumping the contents of his wastebasket in it. This being Gaston, it's ambiguous who put the fake box over the chute and why: Did Gaston think it was a good idea to hide the garbage chute with a fake box, or did he simply find out something management had done and not bother to tell his coworkers? Or is it an actual suggestion box in the first place, with Gaston only thinking it's a garbage chute?
- In another Gaston strip, (older, and where apparently, he then knew what the box was for), Gaston thinks it's safer to lock the suggestion box, then hide the key. He puts it into a desk drawer, then locks it and notice the desk's key is twisted. He attaches a note to it, where he wrote that he suggests making a new key. Then Gaston puts the desk drawer's key into the locked box.
- One strip
Comic Strips
- In Dilbert, when the Pointy-Haired Boss senses a creative idea being formed, he sets out a suggestion box to identify and destroy it. There is also a strip where Wally tells Dilbert that "The only employee suggestions that get accepted are the ones that are harmless and stupid.", and that he submitted some of those to test his theory. The following panel shows he is right, as the Pointy-Haired Boss is actually considering they can work.
- The Far Side: One cartoon is several demons in Hell reading suggestions out of a suggestion box and laughing uproariously.
- One issue of Tina's Groove (where the protagonist works in a diner) had a payoff similar to The Far Side strip where she and the other employees laugh over entries in the Suggestion Box.
Literature
- Downplayed in The Cupid Suggestion Box, a The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids short side-story told in the form of a series of suggestions placed in the titular Box and the Copper-Colored Council's comments on them. The Council initially institute the Box in good faith, but the suggestions range from ill-advised to ludicrous and they are soon reduced to making weary comment after weary comment, until one of the Councilmembers puts in one final request that the others immediately approve: getting rid of the Suggestion Box itself.
- Holes: In the companion book Stanley Yelnats's Guide to Surviving Camp Green Lake, it's revealed that the titular juvenile detention site Camp Green Lake had a suggestion box. Given that most of the camp's inhabitants were bored delinquent boys, most of the suggestions tended to be wild pitches that would never be allowed, like "pizza days" or "Friday night dances with Girl Scouts." There was a suggestion for adjusting the showers that was accepted, but it backfired as it resulted in the boys getting less water per shower so after that no one attempted a serious suggestion again.
Live-Action TV
- Andor: The Free Trade Sector is a corporate-ruled fiefdom. When briefing his men, Mosk says that the civilians might not appreciate a bunch of corporate soldiers marching around, but they can remind them about the monthly "Territorial Forum" where they can submit complaints. The smirks this gets makes it clear this is a formality at best.
- In The Big Bang Theory episode "The Vacation Solution", when President Siebert, head of the science department, goes to the guys, Sheldon asks if he will take action on the suggestions dropped in the suggestion box outside his office. Siebert says no, and tells Sheldon to stop installing suggestion boxes everywhere. Then Siebert tells Sheldon that he has accrued a large number of vacation days and needs to use them, and the suggestion box, which was installed outside his office by Sheldon himself without permission, has been stuffed with the suggestion, "Please make Sheldon Cooper go on vacation."
- Deadliest Catch: Sig puts out an idea box for the crew of the Northwestern, muttering, "as if I don't already know what they're thinking." One suggestion is "more sleep," which gets an "aw, poor thing" reaction from him. However, the crew also treat it like a joke, such as Edgar suggesting that Sig shower more often.
- In Drop the Dead Donkey this was Inverted, Pointy-Haired Boss Gus was very serious about his various suggestions, and sign-up schemes. It was the rest of the staff that treated them all as a joke.
- The special features of In Plain Sight, Mary and Marshall use the suggestion box for dueling suggestions, driving Stan crazy to the point he actually puts suggestions in his own box.
- Kirby Buckets: In one episode, Kirby, Fish, and Ellie are about to snatch the suggestion box; it contained a comic that made fun of the teachers at school. The trio learned that the teachers are making fun of the students' suggestions during a party.
- M*A*S*H:
- In the episode "Morale Victory", Hawkeye and BJ's first act as morale officers is having Klinger build a suggestion box for the camp. The suggestions they get include "burn down the camp" and "First Annual Naked Day".
- A variation occurs when Klinger is at a Black Market and finds items stolen from him being sold there. He's told that if he has a complaint, he can go to the "Complaints Department"... which happens to be a large Korean thug death-glaring at him.
- In NewsRadio, the problem with the suggestion box isn't that Dave ignores the suggestions; it's that the others use the suggestions for jokes and insults.
Dave: [after reading several silly suggestions and one legit one] Uh, "Who's the black private dick who's the sex machine with all the chicks?"
Bill, Beth, Lisa, Matthew, Joe: SHAFT!
Bill: I thought we'd all enjoy that. - In The Office episode "Performance Review", Michael insists on reviewing the suggestion box while his boss, Jan, is in the office conducting his performance review. Despite Michael's insistence that they read from the box weekly, the first suggestion he pulls out regards Y2K, five years prior to when the episode aired. Another is just a piece of gum thrown away in a sheet of paper. Finally, he pulls out a request for depression outreach, which Michael mocks, from an employee who killed himself a year prior.
- In Scrubs, Dr. Kelso's suggestion box is his trash bin.
- Ted Lasso: Ted starts a suggestions box when he becomes AFC Richmond's manager. Aside from one serious suggestion to fix the water pressure in the locker room showers, most of the players just use it to anonymously insult Ted (except Roy who signed his).
Magazines
- MAD Magazine:
- An article on How to Tell If You Work in a Sweatshop: "The last guy to use the suggestion box hasn't been seen in days."
- MAD Magazine 144 had a piece called "X-RAYvings" where it showed the unlikely behind-the-scenes setup of things, e.g., a gas station where both the regular and premium grades draw from the same underground storage tank. One item x-rayed a department store suggestion box, revealing the shredded inside.
Podcasts
- In Season 8 of Dice Funk, the town of Grendal's new mayor (former party member Phillipa) sets up a suggestion box after being selected by sortition. Shoko the gremlin stuffs it with what are mostly ridiculous suggestions and demands, but she eventually makes a good point in asking that Neelith the squidling stop reading people's minds without permission.
Video Games
- LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2: One of Kang's Kang-nouncements is reassuring the citizens of Chronopolis his suggest box is actually a super hi-tech sophisticated system, and not that the notes are simply dumped into an endless abyss.
- Most of the Suikoden games have a "suggestion box"... which is actually just your collected characters griping about each other, suggesting you buy their stuff or wondering what to write for the suggestion box. Very few actual suggestions are ever made.
Webcomics
- Maximumble: One strip has a Mean Boss set up a suggestion box for their employees. It's actually just a shredder.
Web Original
- "A Few Suggestions," the prequel to the Abandoned by Disney series of tales, deals with one such suggestion box. The reason it's superficial? In the final tale, "Corruptus," the author alludes to the fact that the box he received still had the lock on it, indicating it was never even opened.
Web Videos
- Troopers: In "Suggestion Box", the Darth Vader Captain Ersatz Dread Lord Sinister installs a suggestion box. Those troopers who are interested in maintaining good health (or just living) might wish to decline placing suggestions in the box.
- In this Rooster Teeth short, Matt creates a complaint box to reduce employee frustration. Joel is skeptical about it, especially when it turns out that the complaint box uses a "template book of complaints" which is just a Mad Libs book that's already been filled out. When Joel begrudgingly writes a complaint anyway, it turns out that the complaint box is a paper shredder.
- In Michael Reeves' "I Hate Your Robot Ideas", Michael illustrates his disdain for viewer suggestions of robot ideas by setting up a machine that automatically screencaps and prints their suggestion directly into a shredder.
- Jake and Amir: In the "Suggestion Box" videos (Part 1, Part 2), Amir makes a suggestion box and says that he wants to know how to improve, but after reading them, dismisses almost all suggestions as "goofs".
Western Animation
- The Amazing World of Gumball: In "The Loophole", Gumball wants to complain to Miss Simian about the concept of homework, so she suggests he put it in the suggestion box. There's a suggestion box next to the classroom door that drops Gumball's suggestion right into a paper shredder. Gumball follows up by saying he wants to file a complaint, to which Miss Simian says to go to the Complaint Box. Cue a shot of a mailbox in the middle of a desert wasteland, with the bones of a student still gripping a letter sticking out of the mailbox lid.
- In the Amphibia episode "Sprig vs Hop Pop", Sprig discovers that the suggestion box that Hop Pop set up so the kids can submit ideas on how to improve the farm has a fire pit hidden inside to burn their suggestions. He's so incensed that he challenges Hop Pop for control of the farm, and wins. By the end of the episode, Sprig has learned just how hard it is to actually run a farm and that seemingly good ideas don't always work in practice, while Hop Pop has learned to actually listen to others' suggestions, no matter how terrible they may be. He still burns most of the suggestions, but at least he reads them first.
- Doug: In "Doug and the Bluffington Five", when S.P.U.D. (Students Protesting the Uniform Decision) hand Mr. Bone a stack of papers regarding their opinion on the decision to have the students of Beebe Bluff Middle School wear school uniforms, he gladly accepts them and pops them into "the ol' suggestion box," which is a paper shredder with "Suggestion Box" written on it.
- Gravity Falls: The Mystery Shack has comment cards for tourists to fill out after their visit, but Grunkle Stan gleefully tosses them all into a bottomless pit without reading them. And when Mabel complains about Grunkle Stan's behavior as the boss, he redirects her to the "complaint department," which is just a garbage can.
- On Jimmy Two-Shoes, when the town is particularly angry with Lucius, Jimmy suggests a suggestion box. Lucius loves the idea: all those suggestions in a box where he doesn't have to look at them.
- King of the Hill: A variation. When Peggy takes over Sugarfoot's BBQ, she immediately calls a meeting to discuss her upcoming changes to the restaurant, justifying them with slips from a locked suggestion box she obviously wrote herself. The cook points out that the suggestion box might work better if it actually had a slot in it.
- An episode of The Oblongs revealed that the company's suggestion box emptied right into the furnace. According to the boss, Bob had single-handily kept the plant warm for years.
- The Simpsons:
- In the episode, "When Flanders Failed", the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant has a suggestion box, but it's pretty clear that Mr. Burns ignores all the suggestions, using them as an excuse to mock his employees.
- In "The Wettest Stories Ever Told", Bart tells the tale of the Bounty, and Skinner made a suggestion box out of Martin's head — the last guy who suggested a suggestion box.
Real Life
- A popular but antisocial sign reads "Complaint Department. Take a number" with the number in question attached to a grenade pin.
