(Hey, folks, Chuck Chockley here from the Ninjalistics New Media Marketing Initiative. Sorry I can't bring you my regular "Monday Chuck" column this week (Week 005 of the Thousand Weeks of Ninja: The Ninjalistics Entertainment Dominance Project™!). It seems a senior Ninjalistics executive lost an underwater-breathing contest this past weekend to an executive from Ninja Burger. As payoff, his successors have reluctantly ordered me to run this high-handed puff piece by one of those typically stuck-up Ninja Burger reps. Yeah, I know, groan time -- but at least it talks about the Day of the Ninja, coming up this December 5th! So just grit your teeth, read the darned thing, and I'll be back next week with my regular column. Keep telling it true! -- Chuck Chockley)

Recruitment, high employee turnover, and you: A Ninja Burger success story

Michael Fiegel

Ninja Burger, the world's only fast food restaurant run by ninja, was founded in 1954 at a moment in time when two great tides were sweeping the globe: the Cold War and the rise of Fast Food. With many ninja out of work after World War II, it became clear a niche existed for these skilled employees, and Ninja Burger attained some success delivering to high-profile individuals in high-security situations. So arose our now-infamous marketing slogan: Guaranteed Delivery in 30 Minutes or Less, or We Commit Seppuku.

As one might expect, this guarantee brings no shortage of risks. Given that Ninja Burger was only known to the elite we served -- presidents, dictators, generals and the like -- this necessarily left certain individuals out of the loop, such as security guards, guard dogs, police officers, and others who were often in possession of guns, batons, teeth, and assorted lethal weapons.

Needless to say, Ninja Burger has suffered from a high employee turnover, due mostly to casualties but also to significant defections and betrayals (to be expected when dealing with ninja). This latter has been exacerbated by the rise of misinformation propagated by such sites as Ninjalistics, Real Ultimate Power, and their ilk. The former's lack of historical awareness and complete disdain for ninja tradition (as well as their continued misuse of "ninjas" as the plural of ninja), and the latter's insistence that ninja wail on guitars and hang out with hippopotami, have done much to tarnish the reputation of legitimate ninja-run businesses.

Faced with these challenges, Ninja Burger has been forced to adapt, keeping to ancient tradition while also incorporating new marketing and recruitment efforts. These bolster morale among younger ninja and increase the influx of new employees to offset turnover from work-related fatalities.

The primary means of achieving our ambitious recruitment goals was the development in 2001 of a Ninja Burger website, which for the first time allowed individuals to apply to work for us online. The vast majority were not ninja, but with a slight lowering of the bar (from "Is a ninja" to "Can spell 'ninja'"), we were able to more than quadruple recruitment. Though the majority of these "non-ninja" recruits were lost in the line of duty, the numbers were in line with the overall turnover rate among trained ninja. The effort has been a net success, despite the fact that a significant number of website visitors -- perhaps used to the misinformation spun by rivals such as Ninjalistics -- have taken Ninja Burger to be some sort of farce. Outrageous!

To help promote our image further, our ninja marketers also explored nontraditional merchandising in line with that of other fast-food corporations: T-shirts and aprons through Cafe Press; a Ninja Burger roleplaying game with 9th Level Games and, later, aethereal FORGE; a card game with Steve Jackson Games; and more. This culminated with the release through Citadel Press in 2006 of our official Honorable Employee Handbook. (Due to a mixup with the publisher, the book is stocked in the Humor section).

Our latest effort has been the promotion of the Day of the Ninja, an annual holiday celebrated on December 5. On this day, we encourage individuals around the globe to increase ninja awareness by dressing up like ninja, acting like ninja, and spreading information about ninja via blogs, podcasts, photos, video, and other media. The resulting ninja education has a trickle-down effect which has further increased the success of our recruitment efforts. Since 2002, the Day of the Ninja has gone from a small effort to a global initiative involving tens of thousands of participants. In recent years, coordinated DVD and game releases have taken place on December 5, and traditional media outlets such as NPR's Morning Edition and G4 Television have covered the story.

Every December 5, we see yet another spike in applications, which allows us to substantially offset losses from early retirement, termination, and other employee life-modification events. With continued effort from the ninja community, the Day of the Ninja will push our live-to-dead employee ratio back into the black where it belongs.

For more information, visit the Ninja Burger website. To learn about the Day of the Ninja, visit www.dayoftheninja.com.

Ninja Burger is an equal opportunity employer and a trademark of aethereal FORGE. All Rights Reserved.

Michael Fiegel, a writer and game designer in Seattle, created Ninja Burger and the Day of the Ninja. He designed the Ninja Burger roleplaying game, wrote the Honorable Employee Handbook, and co-designed (with Jerry D. Grayson) the new RPG Hellas: Worlds of Sun and Stone.