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| Octavia Spencer won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in The Help |
Rule Number One included the advice, "Don't go crying to White Lady with your problems. You can't pay the light bill? Your feet are too sore? Remember one thing: white people are not your friends. They don't want to hear about it." [p. 38]
Like most of the while folks (not all of them) depicted in The Help, many employers (most? nearly all?) are not their employees' friends either. When push comes to shove, their employees, too, are just "the help."
I'm coming to know this well.
Of course, I can't tell you about it right now.
But there are only thirty more days until retirement.
True words. Even more remarkable to me are big, hierarchical businesses and institutions. At no rung is one's superior likely to be one's friend. Not until the top of the ladder, where one usually finds a vile mix of enmity and cronyism. All up and down the chain, cynicism rules.
ReplyDeleteKen, I trust I might call upon you for some expert editing of my future exposés before I publish them? Your insight into these matters qualifies you for deep content critiquing as well as for language perfection. In advance: thanks!
DeleteSounds like it will be an interesting post, when you post it.
ReplyDeleteKen, excellent writing and thoughtfulness. While I agree that cynicism rules, I personally think that cronyism is actually the most damaging factor in business and politics. In both our society benefits most from people who are the best at what they do - all too often we seem to get the people who have the best connections.
ReplyDeleteThat said, a thought from the other side as to why the employer learns not to be the friend of the employee. Years ago, after more than a decade of running a fairly successful photography business, I went temporarily insane and decided to greatly expand the operation by bringing in an extra photo editor and a couple of friends who were very good amateur photographers. They were committed to producing excellent images but could care less about profit or marketing - until they came on board with us they never made any money, they just loved their art. So we offered them the opportunity to get away from their $12 to $15 per hour menial jobs which left them only a few hours a week to take photos, and become full-time photographers earning upwards of $25 to $50 per hour, depending on their assignments. The deal was my staff would do the marketing and editing, and all they had to do was maintain their commitment to great imagery.
On paper, what could be better? And for the first two months it worked even more superbly than we could have dreamed. My photographer friends were thrilled to be earning money from their hobby, our clients were excited by their enthusiasm and creativity, and our photo editors were elated at how little editing was needed because of their attention to detail. Then came the third and fourth months. Instead of arriving early they were barely on time. Instead of attention to detail, like moving obvious obstacles out of the way, they adopted the "no worries, they can take it out in the computer" mindset. By the sixth month they were griping about having to do the very photo assignments they had clamored for in the beginning and seemed to think they should be paid just for talking about taking photos, not actually doing so. By the eighth month I went from being an encouraging friend to attempting to figure out why these saboteurs were trying to destroy my business. By then we were doing much more business but I was having to pay myself less because instead of taking photos, as I had for years, I was cleaning up their messes. Fortunately, as noted previously, it was only temporary insanity and I stopped the experiment within a year. They went back to their menial jobs and taking photos only as they could find time, and after a couple of years we recovered from the damage they did.
Mine is but one example in a small business, but I have to wonder how many bosses in large corporations quickly come to look at disinterested and unreliable employees the same way I came to view my former friends. There are always at least two sides to every story. How much of the enmity that develops in business is the fault of the superior and how much is created by the actions of the employee?
Moto, there's no doubt that some employees are bad apples, and good ones can turn bad by taking their work for granted. I was thinking about hierarchical work environments — I've worked in 3 — where performance goals are passed down the line and applied whether realistic or not. At each level, a manager can "interpret" them (to a limited degree) but cannot block them. A manager who blocks would fail at his performance goals.
ReplyDeleteI'll give you a case in point. At Cisco, where I worked for 8 years, each new year brought a new requirement that employees identify the initiatives they would undertake in that year. (This is a commonplace practice in my work experience.) The ritual at Cisco is odder than in many places because Cisco operates on a shoestring. All the departments I was familiar with seemed to be intentionally understaffed, and none more starved than the tech writing departments, where I worked. Yet every year we were asked to enumerate the new things we would do to improve productivity, quality, and personal growth. The entire exercise was absurd, demoralizing, and downright cruel. The kicker came the year we were asked to define and implement a program for improving morale! Clearly, a business that operates this way is powered by cynicism, and the managers who grease the operation are not the workers' friend.
Ken, the work conditions you describe sound like they could be from the time of Dickens. Sorry to hear that you or anyone else had to suffer through such in our allegedly "enlightened" times. And to think the leaders of that corporate bureaucracy are probably among the quickest to complain about our political leadership.
ReplyDeleteOn a lighter note, I know someone in the insurance coding business who was recently put through the exact scenario you describe at Cisco. She fortunately found another job, just as she was supposed to be emailing in her goals for the upcoming year at her old job. So she sent her soon to be former boss a simple email: "Goal: to escape this place. As of Friday: goal achieved."
I like it!
ReplyDeleteSo Ken, did you hopefully get to exit in similar grand style?
ReplyDeleteNo, I didn't enjoy anything that exquisite. I deliberately pissed off an ex-manager just before I left my next-to-last job, but my retirement was a different story. I wanted more recognition, management offered me kind words, I said thanks but sincerity is measured in cash. They said no cash, and I then gave notice that I was retiring.
ReplyDeleteOn the bright side for you folks who had to suffer through the kind of mismanagement you describe, at least you get to retire. And hopefully retire well, as you should for having to put up with such. For those of us at the tail-end of the "boomer" era however, especially those of us who have been self-employed our entire careers, there will probably be no such luck.
ReplyDeleteFriends my age used to joke that the oldest boomers got to prepare for their retirement by finishing their careers under the greatest years of arguably the most dominant society in history - while we get to spend what should have been our peak earning years in a failed socialist state, preparing for our retirement by practicing saying "would you like to super-size that?" and "welcome to big box." I say used to joke because we now wonder if what we thought was a temporary aberrational downturn is now the new reality.
All we ask is that when you walk into your favorite big-box store to buy the cheapest essentials you can find to stretch your retirement dollars as far as possible, please remember the demeaning moments of your own career and be kind to the not-quite senior citizen offering you a cart. And maybe slip us a buck for gas for the ride home on the moped...
Moto, I am deeply moved by your plight.
ReplyDeleteKen, just remember, "sincerity is measured in cash," to quote an expert. To be honest, being a big-box greeter is not my plight (not yet anyway), and since I am learning to race motorcycles and planning cross-country trips on them at an age when I should be at least thinking about finding the perfect recliner, it probably never will be. However, when I look at all the debt that has been run up in this country since 1980, and the age groups that are expected to somehow pay for it, it is one of the few times I wish that I was 10 years older and am relieved not to be 10 years younger. The really sad part for those younger generations is they are having to put up with the same corporate incompetence and arrogance you did, and they get paid a lot less while enjoying the privilege.
ReplyDeleteMoto, we actually have two holes in our economy, a real one and a fake one. The latter is both a complication and a distraction. Worse, the electorate can't tell the difference between the two. So the next time you feel like despairing about America's future, don't turn an evil eye on the Republicans or the Democrats. Turn it on your neighbors, John and Jane Doe. In a democracy, we always get the government (and the future) we deserve.
ReplyDeleteKen, couldn't agree with you more that our neighbors are the real problem. On your other point, what do you think are the real and fake holes in our economy?
ReplyDeleteI'd like to expand on this, Moto, but I'm afraid I've taken Morris's subject too far afield. If the time comes when Morris posts about the fake and the real in politics today, I'll be happy to chime in.
ReplyDeleteKen, you make a good point, although I think a case could be made that this all relates to "The Help." We "hire" politicians to do what we want them to do by voting them into office. Yet, as far as I am concerned, they never deliver. And the results don't seem to change if it is a politician I vote for, or against.
ReplyDeleteYou had to toe the line to keep a job because bosses "recall" employees who don't deliver by firing them; why don't voters do that more often? Why does our "help" tell us what to do instead of doing what we tell them to do? But yes, let's see if Morris wants to weigh in on this.
"Weigh in" on it? I feel such a lightweight in this class, I'm going to have to ask my muse for a few extra servings of mashed potatoes. Which she may, or may not, deliver.
DeleteWhile I'm waiting on that with great expectations, I'll also muse on what "the fake and the real in politics today" might be. Frankly, I see so much fake, there appears little evidence of anything real.
But wait! If I'm onto something significant in that thought, I should probably develop it into a new post. Stay tuned, if you possess the patience for it.