Generic business competition desperately tries to surprise everyone

Bumble Bee Business Club, the university club in which members wear suits in the blistering summer and pretend to run an actual organisation, has announced the date for their flagship event RantWitz 2.0.

Like every year, this year the event is even more exciting as they have special super-duper mega surprises in store for competitors.

Although the surprises were not to be revealed, the generous organisers thought of blessing the contestants with some hints about it through a Facebook Live.

Even though the live show was scheduled at 8:00pm, they started at exactly 8:47pm, perhaps to make the whole thing even more surprising.

In the "Surprise Hint Revelation Ceremony", the host, unsurprisingly, read out the welcome note from his screen, which everyone watching the Live noticed, as the slides were visible on his highly reflective pair of glasses.

After reiterating the club's formal history of creating corporate slaves and flashing manufactured informal photos of the club's executive board, the host read out, "Without further ado, let's start our Grand Surprise Hint Revelation Ceremony!"

He then opened up a slide deck that he (or probably some junior lackey club member) diligently prepared by sprinkling some creative-dust onto free Canva templates.

Afterwards, what the audience saw was very dramatic, if not surprising.

By mixing exaggerated pauses, out-of-control inflection and constant reading-out from the screen, the host urged the audience to guess the event's grand prize, which had not yet been announced.

One of the Canva-prepared slides showed a large dollar sign followed by three dots, prompting the audience to rack their brains. In just a few moments, the comments were flooded with prize possibilities, from Tk 10 to Tk 1 crore.

The host read out some comments and showed them on the screen using an advanced streaming function he learnt watching tutorials made by Indian YouTubers, to make the not-so-bright audience feel like they are valued and their opinions matter.

At one point, the host realised that just giving out hints will not work; he needed to spell it out.

As the comments increased, tensions heightened, excitement culminated and suspense reached its peak, the host started lengthening his pauses.

"The grand prize… for… Bumble Bee presents RantWitz 2.0… powered by… Moomoo Baby Formula… in association with… Kacha Ball Shaban… is… the element of sur-prize!"

The comments halted. If this was a video call, many dropping jaws would have been spotted. The participants were expecting to be surprised by the grand prize, but they had no idea just how surprising it would be.

The grand prize was the "sur-prize" itself. No, no one will get money.

But it didn't just end there. In addition to the sur-prize, the sponsor of the competition, Bhoyonkor Consulting Ltd, promised the champion team a once in a lifetime opportunity to become interns at the company.

Of course, whether the internship was paid or unpaid was also an element of the grand surprises. There was a surprise for the semi-finalists too, but by now, the participants realised that it was nothing but participation certificates in jpeg format.

Then came the segment where each round of the competition would be described in excruciating detail, although they were packed with surprises as well.

But before the surprises could be revealed, the host himself was left surprised due to load-shedding. Thus, the Surprise Hint Revelation Ceremony ended abruptly, with hints still to be given.

The Live is yet to resume, and upon messaging the authority, the only reply was, "Keep an eye on our Facebook page. You may be surprised!"