Afraid From 9 to 5

This New Work Order is nothing short of horrifying to me to be quite frank. All this talk about the identity of a company, workplace, or business is all very unsettling to me. What else sorely sticks out to me is some of the verbiage used in this piece, “culture”, “ideology”, “community”, “social practices”, are all slightly disturbing words when describing a fucking company. I don’t want to sound like the libertarian, or the crackpot liberal hippy doofus trying to bust up big business but am I the only one that feels like this is a little insane? It is almost like it is a cult, doing its best to not just find a foothold, but use its employees and customers to extend and strengthen those roots. Again, I want to make it really clear, we’re talking about a company here. And I really don’t want to sound like that guy, but I just can’t help but find this exceptionally creepy. In a company’s defense though, if they have the means to better a community or social as a whole through somewhat odd practices, I can understand if a decent case is made.

The whole company culture thing should be used as far as putting a good face to the public, and I somewhat think that is what is intended but it seems to go farther than that. Much of this “culture” implies engulfing one’s life in terms of the products they see and buy and the way they interact with the company and its products as a whole. Mirroring that idea on to employees is another thing I find very unsettling. More and more companies are finding themselves encroaching on the personal out of office lives of their employees which I just can’t agree with. Another major issue with this is the disconnect that is presented when moving from early school to higher education to work and then back and forth between personal life and work life throughout a career or tenure. I believe that to be a major problem that can greatly affect academia, forcing it to play catch up or even shift in the wrong direction entirely, screwing its students when they are ready to jump into the job market. The other major issue I see with this is alienating the institutions I mentioned as well as potential employees and other companies and the businesses market as a whole.

One solution I thought would be more involvement in academia from companies, allowing them to properly direct places of learning on what they were looking for, and how students pursuing a job at their company or the like should approach schooling. As soon as I finished having that horrible thought I proceeded to the horribly, most likely, outcome of that horrible idea. Odds are these companies would mess with learning beyond belief, and probably indoctrinate students with their culture, ideas, and tips before they even leave school which could have a very negative effect on them. The whole thing is a little weird. Good thing my job allows me to sit back and watch this lunacy unfold, I even get to make fun of it.

 

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