Tattle tales of the corporate ladder

I’m a freelance writer for a reason.

For the times when I chose to work for the man, I felt caged, controlled, and almost angry at myself for allowing myself to be belittled regularly.

I understand that in whatever work we do, we’re all accountable to someone else at some point. In the corporate world, however, people are consistently accountable to upper management. Apologies, I mean, Upper Management.

If you don’t believe me, ask your supervisor who has a supervisor.

Let’s put you down for a minute

Nothing makes a person feel like less than someone else than when the Leadership Team is mentioned in conversation. It’s the instant way to draw a line between those that do the work and those that expect the work to be done. In whoever said the bad word’s defense, it’s the culture. They’ve been part of it for so long, they probably don’t know any better.

The irony in that culture is that there’s so much team-building talk that is regularly thrown around by this year’s fresh-on-the-job HR person, they seem to miss the morale-building part of the exercise.

I knew someone who once said about his corporate job, “I didn’t come here to make friends, I came here to make money.”

Needless to say, team-building is wasted on him. It’s too late. He can’t be helped. Also, I’m not sure if he really falls victim to low morale because of his naturally pleasant demeanor (eye roll).

Hey! I’m (not really) in charge!

Those in middle management on a corporate conference call can drive me up a wall. These are the same people that name-drop who’s actually in charge on a daily basis. Hint, it’s not them.

It’s not that they aren’t important to the company. Seriously, just ask them and they’ll tell you. They’re the busy ones pointing fingers and need a tactic when they feel like the directions they’re giving aren’t being heard. It’s then that the corporate threat is unleashed, “I just want to make sure our ducks are in a row so that so-and-so from leadership doesn’t come down on us.”

So-and-so…that would be who calls the shots and shoots the ducks that aren’t in a row.

It’s two birds with one stone, really:
1) The middle person just alerted you to who they are.
2) You just learned that if you don’t acknowledge who they are, they’ll tell on you.

Cross ’em and dot ‘em

Seriously, if the sh*t hits the fan because someone’s eyes weren’t crossed or someone didn’t show up on the dot for tee time, your name’s coming up next on the regularly scheduled and ill-timed daily morning meeting call.

You’ve now been warned and the corporate finger’s gonna be pointed at you.

I can’t count the number of times on those calls that I had to triple-check that my mute button was on before choosing to share my feelings out loud about so-and-so or the person giving the dire warning on their behalf.

I learned to just bite my tongue and resort to exercising my finger. You know, the one next to the one that I normally point with.

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