PMB hates corporations. Usually when someone says 'I hate corporations,' the presumption is that such hatred is fueled or animated by a problem with red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalism, or a distaste for profiteering, or some general, amorphous leftyish hippie sentimentalism of the sort you'd encounter at music festivals. Down with the man, man.
It's not unreasonable to criticize corporations--especially the largest and most unfeeling of them--for putting profit ahead of people, or for behaving in some cases like reckless authoritarians, or for purchasing intimate access to governors and policymakers that the rest of us can't afford. But surely these are primarily the faults of large corporations like Wal Mart and Google, not small businesses or medium-sized manufacturers who provide us with access to so many comforts and commodities.
But PMB doesn't just hate large corporations. PMB hates corporations in general. Because one of the greatest constants of corporations, large and small, domestic and international, for-profit and nonprofit virtually alike, is that they set the standards for workplace culture; and 'workplace culture' is really just a euphemism for 'controlling as much of your entire life as is humanly or legally possible.'
And this goes beyond the old 'we'll pay for your Blackberry!' (subtext: we expect you to check and respond to e-mail 24 hours/day); this includes inexcusably invasive policies even before they hire you. All of which is nothing, mind you, compared to the least-questioned and arguably most-oppressive facet of modern industrial society: the fact that working adults have to report to an office every day, remain there all day, and, regardless of productivity, rely on maybe two or three weeks in a given year during which we might be 'excused' by our in loco parentis employers to 'go on vacation' (the explicit purpose of which, mind you, is not so much to enjoy your life as it is to 'refresh' yourself for the work you have when you return).
The problem here isn't that societies require work and productivity to grow and provide for everyone; so the argument here is not necessarily that we should be able to work less. It's just that, when we become grownups, we should be able to work like grownups, on deadlines, but without being rounded up into a workplace whose 'culture' is primarily oppressive, stifling, Orwellian, insufferable, and, in many cases, completely unnecessary. With the technology that we have--cheap wireless networks, teleconferencing, the good ol' fashioned telephone, transportation devices like the subway, the bicycle, the bus, and the automobile, and the ever-important coffee shop, many of us don't need an office to report to in order to get our work done. And when we need to have meetings (as opposed to when a critical mass of people occupying an office, bored out of their minds, decides that its time to have a meeting because there's nothing better to do), can't we initiate and coordinate them ourselves, between ourselves and our colleagues? Shouldn't we just abandon this whole notion of reporting to the office like a child reports to homeroom every morning on a school day?
This isn't exactly a novel idea--Jason Fried, of a web-based company called 37signals, gave a TED talk about it. Probably most people reading this have thought, many times over, that if only they didn't have their day at the office compartmentalized into 30-minute bits, with people asking for this and that simply because they're there and you're there and this is how the 'workplace culture' works, they could actually get some work done. Certainly when corporations advertise jobs with statements indicating preference for 'motivated' individuals, 'self-starters,' with 'the ability to work independently,' etc., they're not envisioning an employee who needs a boss sipping coffee in the next room (or cubicle; or open space) to the left occasionally checking in, micromanaging, or simply working independently a few feet away from you...for what?
Yes, some people will argue that 'if I didn't have an office with set work hours, I wouldn't have separation between my work life and my life life.' To this PMB would say that if you honestly think about the idea of compartmentalizing your 'work life' and 'life life,' you'd be depressed to find out that your 'work life' takes up so much of the sum total of your life that sectioning off your 'life life' is just kind of pathetic. A better approach, as far as PMB is concerned, would be to admit that spending much of our lives working can actually be very natural and very fulfilling, just not under the conditions that presently constitute 'working' in a corporate or corporate-influenced environment. Time after time after time we report higher levels of satisfaction from doing our work in a self-directed manner, and, accordingly, feeling some sense of ownership over it. Rather than letting an employer decide for you how to compartmentalize your life and on what terms and in what environment to complete your work, why not control it yourself? On the surface, it might be easier to accept the readymade boundaries handed you, just as drawing new boundaries between work and leisure might be harder to do at first when the artifice of the workplace is taken away; but certainly we want more agency over our lives and our schedules, not less.
It seems what set out to be a screed against the corporate influence over workplace culture has turned out to be a general condemnation of workplace culture itself. Though we shouldn't forget that corporate interests are indeed pushing for greater control over employees' lives, even before they become employees. Imagine, for a moment, living in a society in which your government told you where to be at what time every day; that your government compiled files of your internet activity, text messages, and photos, and used them to evaluate your social worth; that your government required you to piss in a cup every month to screen you for drug use; that your government told you when you could and couldn't leave the country, go the beach, or spend a few hours in the afternoon in the park with your children; that your government controls who you buy health insurance from, and which doctors you're allowed to see. It's probably not too difficult to imagine, actually, if you simply replace the word 'government' with 'employer.'
