Will the WuFlu be the end of the 'Corporate Family' shtick? - Or am I being too optimistic?

[Shield Breaker]

If anyone works, or has worked, for a corporation, then you know the big thing they all do is talk about how you're all a family. You have emails touting it, bosses who go on about it, and off-hours where they expect you to go to a bar or some other place to spend time together and hang out. Every time something happens, good or bad, you will be reminded that you're all in this together as a family.

Maybe it's because I have an actual family, but I've always felt it creepy and fake. Unless it was absolutely required for some reason, I would always nope out of going. I saw it as a cynical attempt to, for lack of a better term, indoctrinate you into drinking the company kool-aid, and I feel like the coronavirus pandemic has proven me right.

I am not going to be specific about my job or company, but I work for a sizeable one who does the whole 'corporate family' thing. When WuFlu first hit here, we were told that since we were a family, no one was being laid off. Then it became people were going to be furloughed, but they weren't being fired. This week, 75% of the employees of all positions were fired and told when the jobs open back up they will have to apply like everyone else. It gets better, tho'. Our management let slip the fact that they knew from the beginning of the furlough the firings were going to happen, and so this whole thing was a farce.

This is probably repeating itself around the world right now. I'm one of the lucky ones / my position would be a bigger pain to fill, but I still feel like I've been kicked in the stomach. People I've known for years are suddenly jobless with a meager severance pay, through no fault of their own.

So, do you think the lie of the corporate family will survive, or will this make people even more cynical towards the term to the point where it gets thrown out like 'synergy' did.

 

[Lone MacReady]

Seeing all those cookie-cutter Corona commercials like 3 days after the lockdown started fucking skeeved me out. Sure these people are propagandists, but the laziness of it is truly shocking these days.

 

[Dyn]

The corporate family ended way back when all the decent blue-collar jobs got outsourced to robot arms and bangladeshi children. The lie lived on because an entire generation of egocentric selfish parasites spent their younger years profiting from the culture of corporate loyalty and the prosperous but socially responsible economy that their forefathers left them, then they turned around and fuck you got mine'd the entire world the second they made it to upper management.

The lie itself won't end until this entire blighted crop is purged and plowed over, and if Corona Chan can't finish the job then I think it's well past time that we harden our hearts and start going house-to-house to finish it for her.

 

[Bunny Tracks]

People who fall for corporate family shit these days are naive, brain-dead idiots.

Every job I ever had with the single exception of the one I have now has tried to get me and my co-workers to fall for it, but none of us ever did. The only people that "believed" it was management, and that was because they were forced to push it onto employees by the higher-ups, because they were actually paid a decent wage and didn't have to deal with every Karen, Kevin, and Jayden that came into the store to raise hell, and because the majority of them were boomers who had the luxury of actually living during a time where the term "corporate family" actually meant shit.

Now having said that, I did go out with other co-workers for drinks and the like, but that was only because they were actually cool, and fun to hang out with, but we never considered each other family. If anything, it was more of a comradery against all the shitty, annoying customers, and management. Speaking of which, and most importantly...

Never go out with management. Ever. Even if you are part of management, or stuck in some shitty No Man's Land between management and being a regular employee like I was. The other managers will try to get you to rat out your co-workers, and try to get you to rat yourself out. Don't do it. Ever. Your boss is not your friend, no matter how much they try to get you to believe they are.

Also, don't piss off your other co-workers by being a snitch, a kiss-ass, or acting like your the boss and telling them what to do because nothing unites a department into making your life a living hell by doing that. And don't think you won't get fired just because you suck up to management. It doesn't matter how long you've been there, how good your service is, or how many times you've snitched, or sucked up to management. Your ass can be gone in an instant and never think otherwise.

Getting to the actual question, the answer is no. The WuFlu is not going to be the end of the corporate family-at least not entirely. It might weaken it for a while, but make no mistake, this sort of bullshit has been around for a long time, and it's going to continue to be around for a long time. Honestly, the only thing I see finally getting rid of it for good is the complete automatization of the workforce. I don't even think everyone working from home would be enough to get rid of it.

 

[Classist.]

Hmmm I think even if the 'corporate family' thing goes out the window some equally lame form of 'we're all in this together, now bend over and bite the pillow' will take it's place. Perhaps it's kind of cynical but I think most large organizations are propagandistic by nature, the flavor may change but you'll always be drinking some form of cool-aid or another.

 

[OmnipotentStupidity]

Seeing all those cookie-cutter Corona commercials like 3 days after the lockdown started fucking skeeved me out. Sure these people are propagandists, but the laziness of it is truly shocking these days.

 

[Foxxo]

From what I've seen, everyone who still has a job will try to go back to the way things were, while trying to ignore all of the bridges that they've burned.

 

[AutismGeorge999]

No, because boomers are moronic, technologically illiterate idiots unable to learn from their mistakes, and will demand shit they did not earn while insisting that the younger generations to "get back to work" because they want to go on a cruise.

 

[010101]

The only people who believe this shtick are those who need a replacement family and they'll keep thinking their corporation cares about them as more than wageslaves.

 

[The Fresno Nightcrawler]

Seeing all those cookie-cutter Corona commercials like 3 days after the lockdown started fucking skeeved me out. Sure these people are propagandists, but the laziness of it is truly shocking these days.

 

[The Last Stand]

Corporate families are just marketing buzz. It's a manipulative tactic used by companies to make the employees feel like they belong, therefore increase work productivity and output.

Smaller businesses, I can see the family dynamic. Hire local, buy local, support local. That's a community.

Mega corporations want money first and foremost. Behind the scenes, if they are allowed to, they'd rip off you, me and their employees without a second thought if it meant more profit.

 

[Y2K Baby]

I will make a corporate family sex-trafficking rink (for kids)
LOL
LMA

 

[wopirish]

Corporate family schtick, remember buy stock in Enron. I always saw it as essentially the same. A company I used to work for loved saying that the dude running it started from nothing except a 200k loan and a dream and that we all could do that too. okay jan.

 

[whatever I feel like]

My corporate family not only didn't give me an interview for the job I applied for, they didn't even tell me I didn't get an interview. I just randomly came in one day and saw the outside hire being announced.

Good thing too, she was part of the Covid layoffs and I surely would have been if I had got it in her stead...

 

[Shield Breaker]

Corporate families are just marketing buzz. It's a manipulative tactic used by companies to make the employees feel like they belong, therefore increase work productivity and output.

Smaller businesses, I can see the family dynamic. Hire local, buy local, support local. That's a community.

Mega corporations want money first and foremost. Behind the scenes, if they are allowed to, they'd rip off you, me and their employees without a second thought if it meant more profit.

I've been rat fucked harder by a local company I worked for than I ever have been by a corporation. Then again, the town was Polish.

 

[dirtydeanna96]

That corporate family shtick should have died in the mid 70s when bethlehem steel started laying people off.
Eventually the town died and workers didn't even get pensions.

 

[L50LasPak]

I think the idea is too virulent to ever really go away. If you've ever gotten near or close to the people who really believe in this stuff, you'll quickly realize that you have to almost treat them like they're not human. And especially never tell them the truth or tell them there's any kind of problem. At best, just give bland status reports, keep your head down as far as it can go, do not ask for more work if you run out of stuff to do, do not do anything whatsoever that draws attention or recognition to yourself.

The best exception to this I've found is if you work for a much smaller company and your clueless boss wants you to do teambuilding/corporate family stuff because they read about it in some magazine and like the idea. Without a dedicated morale officer assigned to force this crap on people, it'll be pretty anemic and won't really get anywhere. Usually you can just tell everyone you're busy that day and get out of it. I mean, unless your boss is really committed to the idea.

Ironically the places I've worked where I felt more included and actually had a sense of camaderie with my fellow workers were low-level labor jobs with small staffs and supervisors who didn't care how you got the job done as long as you didn't take too long, followed instructions and didn't fuck anything up by being careless. I really don't understand why large corporate entities don't adopt this outlook. It works better, its better for morale, it requires less work and less planning, and its less stressful. But no matter what arguement you try to bring to the table about it, these people just do not see logic and cannot be reasoned with. I don't see Corona stopping this mindset anytime soon.

 

[Xarpho]

The corporate "family" is too ingrained in corporate culture to really let go easily. The bigger the company, the more workers will be tuned in to knowing it's bullshit, and accept it as long as they can collect a paycheck.

What it might affect is the smaller companies, not publicly traded, but small enough that they can get away with saying it's "family-owned" (as in, some rich Jews own it and give all the good, cushy jobs to their friends and family, while the "other side" gets treated like shit and barely functions through a patchwork of managers that don't last more than a year).

 

[Terrorist]

Your family is who's related to you. That's it. Any other "found family" or "chosen family" conception of it is a bullshit GayOp designed to subjugate you to whoever.

Are you really gonna tell me the fat middle managers you play fantasy league with at BDubs are like brothers to you? Fuck off dude.