Corporate Hell #2

A whole is supposedly equal to the "sum of it's parts" but in corporate life I'd say it's more like the "average" -- the average of upper management, that is. Everything trickles down from the top and if the top is full of crap...well, you know.

I tend to look at such matters from a systems-theory viewpoint where everyone is part of a set of relationships and dynamics that are either constructive or destructive. Everyone plays off of their dependencies with one another and so on... However, if the core of the system is full of crap...well, you know.

I really don't care about this whole fecal ecosystem and they can all be left aflame in a paper-bag on a doorstep for all I care. The problem, as always, occurs when truly good-hearted and hard-working people get sucked into these smelly hurricanes.

Let me give you a real example: Greg is the CEO playboy-wanna-be yes-man who hires John the manager playboy-wanna-be yes-man so that he can build his "good-ole boys club." John hires Joan the Barbie-like supervisor, for obvious reasons, who has no business knowledge (or, really, ANY knowledge.) Joan hires Sally the average employee because she can unconsciously relate to her. Sally is married to a man who can't hold a job and makes his living off of creating workman's comps claims. Sally cheats on her timecard, enters fake data because she is too lazy to do her job, and has nooners with Mary Jane (meaning pot.) As a result, the company sucks, business crashes, the board calls in a hired-gun and the restructuring begins.

In the meantime, there is Ann who has been with the company for the past ten years and has been quite faithful by working hard, not missing work, and advancing herself. Likewise, Mike has been with the company for the past eight years and has earned a much-deserved six weeks of vacation which he likes to spend with his kids while they are young.

But when the restructuring occurs, Ann and Mike get demoted to jobs beneath them while Sally comes out unscarred. The restructuring takes five-plus years and people develop depression, high blood pressure, insomnia, ulcers, and heart disease.

We have all kinds of basic human rights but screw anything of a higher-level. Now that employers can just do a mass e-mail of pink-slips to 400 members of their staff...well, you know.

Back to the system's theory and the average of parts, corporate life is really like any other organism from a single cell to a government to a nation. It all comes down to the core and that is you and I. If you change yourself for the better then you have changed the world, correct?

I don't know. Tell this to Mike who had to get a new job and miss his eldest son's graduation or Ann who invested her skills in a company who demoted her to work under staff more than half her age. Why do we bother?

http://www.workplacefairness.org