Category: corporate hijinks

View posts about consumer culture and the corporate giants who rule it.

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corporations aren’t engaging

News bulletin: greed is not an easily satisfied emotion, nor a fulfilling pursuit.

So why is it hard to understand that public corporations (whose only responsibility nowadays is to maximize profit for the shareholders) are vacuous entities, with many “non-engaged” employees? After all, treating your employees like human beings with fulfilling personal lives isn’t any way to maximize profits, now is it?

My company, decrying flagging employee survey scores, seeks to increase employee engagement, in any way possible other than enhancing benefits or work life balance (i.e., without decreasing profits). Although I like my job and the people I work with, I’m just not motivated to make my job my life, no matter how many profit-contingent bonuses they wave in my face.

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Robert E. Lee quote

The other day, my CEO (who sends a “thought” every day), sends this quote out to the company:

“Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more, you should never wish to do less.” -Robert E. Lee

This is funny in so many ways. First off, the quote is inherently funny because it’s a quote about duty from a rebel general who was a pivotal part of a civil war (well, you see, there’s duty to your original country and duty towards your new spin-off country – oh, give me a break Bobby, you can’t even define duty so you shouldn’t be making up quotes for it). Secondly, it’s funny contextually because Mr. Duty was leading a revolt primarily about the right to keep dark-skinned people as slaves and, while not of African descent, our CEO (the quote-sender) is himself dark-skinned (Indian). I don’t think he’d even pass the paper bag test. And of course, there’s the standard corporate ridiculousness of comparing business to war. I’m sorry, but gaining or losing money (or jobs) is just not the same as watching your family get blown to pieces by a landmine or killing hundreds of people with your trusty rifle and maybe gutting a few with a bayonet.

About a month ago, there was another quote about fighting the good fight as a gladiator. Note: gladiators were slaves of a sort – there seems to be some kind of theme with slavery. I’m not feeling especially inspired for some reason.