SHYLOCK EXPOSED! A Reader writes of the reality of work today.

SHYLOCK EXPOSED! A reader writes of the reality of work today.
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© May 18, 2013

A READER WRITES:

Yesterday was my 25th anniversary at my job. It was a proud day and a sad day. Not one word of recognition for those 25 years. Guess this is what happens when a corporation takes over and you become a number. Two days before they had a recognition ceremony for long term employees but I was not included because my anniversary was after the cut-off date. Just the way the ball bounces as I was told. I became a new employee on March 1st when the corporation took ownership so all those years of dedication and loyalty are a thing of the past. My anniversary date of May 17th was the icing on the cake and I am so happy with my decision to retire sometime this year.


DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY! Knowing you and knowing your dedicated service to this institution and knowing your caring ways throughout the years, I am pleased, no I am proud that you have self-congratulated yourself for your devoted service.

Obviously, there will be no gold watch, no compensation package, no recognition banquet, no collection of friends and relatives and fellow employees to toast your celebration. You are alone in your recognition, your achievement and your appreciation of a job well done.

You have also with this note brought to light the stark reality of the institution made naked. Not only does the purchase of one corporation by another bring a wrecking ball to the enterprise, it disrupts and decimates the culture, the values and beliefs, the implicit rules and relationships, the modus operandi of daily activity. The institution is like Shakespeare's "Shylock" taking a pound of flesh, which is the heart, and leaving the body behind.

The wrecking ball has no conscience, no heart, no feeling for people as persons. It is a matter of dollars and cents, of profit before people, which has no sense. It is the infallibility of authority that believes power is purpose and is justified by the rationale of progress. Those in the corporation take it for granted that they have the power to drive that purpose.

It is not a new thing, not by a long shot. It is why I write books, why I have written such books as "Work Without Managers" and "The Worker, Alone" and "Corporate Sin" and "Time Out for Sanity" and yes, "Meet Your New Best Friend,"

You display that last book with consummate skill and bravado. I salute you for it. You are, indeed, your own best friend.

The corporate, so conceived, has been treading in very disturbing waters for a long time. It shows it has now touched the shore with your treatment where everyone can see it for what it is, a pecuniary and mercenary institution, and not human at all. Yet, without people, without people such as you, the corporation dies. It is a human institution that has become inhuman, and shall pay for its sins in the long run.

If you read my recent essay that I posted to my readers on what “Time Out for Sanity is About" (see www.peripateticphilosopher.com May 16, 2013), you should not be surprised about how you have been treated.

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney said a corporation is human because it is peopled with workers, but he was wrong, dead wrong. A corporation is Machiavellian to the nth degree, and you are now experiencing its insensitivity.

Corporation respect only power and money, people with clout or people who could hurt it, and therefore the corporation acts accordingly.

You are a little person, I am a little person who writes books, and we are little people who the corporation feels it can ignore or dispense with or dispatch at will without doing itself any harm.

The corporation would be wrong because you have had the temerity to write this note, and distribute it to your friends, not with rancor but with disappointment and sadness.

People in America should read your note whatever their status whatever their career level whatever their denial of the poignancy of what you say, as people in America like to believe the corporation "is a family," and that as family the corporation has people’s best interests at heart.

That is not true. People are a commodity, goods in the company store, that have a shelf life and a value and a disposable rate as if they were inanimate, but people are animate. Unfortunately, people are also docile and obliging and take their disregard and disrespect quietly into the night without a word as long as they earn enough to keep body and soul together.

You are different and I salute you for it. God love and keep you always because you, whom I know well, represent the best of us all.

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Jim