How Corporate Culture is Killing Americans

This winter, I heard about companies advising their employees to stay home if they are coughing or ill. It started with the doctors’ offices, I think, and the hospitals. It was refreshing to hear some big companies offering sick time to employees to prevent them from coming to work and spreading contagious germs. It is effective to offer an incentive, like ¾ pay, for employees who are out sick. Most people want to do the right thing, but are afraid of either losing their jobs, or losing income.

Management has long held a certain mystique in American corporate culture. The power that the employer has over the employee in America is frighteningly effective, regardless of the actual circumstances and contractual agreements. Many employees live in dread of losing their jobs, closely associating the event with bankruptcy and shame. A strong upbringing only reinforces the corporate ideal employee who never calls in sick, is available off hours, stays late and never makes trouble. (A cancelled meeting is trouble. A late morning start is trouble. Absence from the office Christmas party is trouble.)

Not all companies are run this way. A company that is truly respectful of human needs must be managed with flexibility and humor. The team is only as strong as its weakest link, so it makes sense to support that link. Tomorrow, you might be the weak link. Your child might come home with chicken pox. Your hot water boiler may need to be replaced. You may catch the flu. If your first thought is for your job, then you are victim of America’s corporate culture.

Your symptoms may differ. Instead, you omit breakfast to get to work on time. You drive great distances to arrive at a sparse, inhospitable office building. You skip daily exercise, or you perform it like a drill, without stretching and warming up. When you are at home, you feel like a stranger – your only friends are coworkers. You go to sleep late, after working nights, and wake to the alarm, getting ready for work like a zombie.

Maybe you have given up cooking, so important to the body and spirit. A cooking meal spurs your body to eat properly, the scents and sounds create a physical reaction that is part of eating healthy. Take the time to cook fresh vegetables, sizzle a portion of meat, and boil up some flavored rice. No take-out, frozen meal, or freeze-dried package can provide the physical experience of a hearty meal.

Obesity doesn’t come from eating too much. It comes from not moving around enough and not eating properly. Corporate culture would rather you sit in your office chair for 8 hours or more. Maybe you even eat lunch and work at the same time. Many companies do not pay for your lunch hour (or ½ hour). You may spend over two hours a day in the driver’s seat of your car. The many problems caused by obesity require medical attention, insurance, and affects productivity.

American companies are aware of the lost productivity, the high cost of insurance, the rising numbers of disabled Americans. If your company requires you to attend a meeting about health insurance and what it costs, including some tips for keeping healthy, you are watching corporate culture at work. You pay for medical insurance, but you are responsible for making sure you don’t get sick or injured. Have you ever felt that you have compromised your health for your job?

You may not even be aware of the on-site dangers of your job. If you work on the computer all day, for several years, you will inevitably suffer physical problems. Carpal tunnel syndrome, sciatica, migraines, vision impairment, and thrombosis are just a few of the ways the body breaks down over time. It’s a natural process that is ignored in corporate culture – neither prevented, acknowledged, or managed. Similarly, during the years of parenting, employees expect little or no help. The timing of the corporate day is cast in stone, and American management is failing to support the basic needs of employees.

Vacations are short breaks from the daily stress of work, but can become an added stressor to someone who has to prepare by working extra hours before the time off, and then puts in more time after returning, to catch up. The manner of accumulating hours of paid vacation time creates management dilemmas. For years, the carry-over of vacation hours from one year to the next has been reduced to 0. That is, employees have to use all their year’s vacation time before the end of December, or they will lose it. The same companies have a policy of “earning” vacation hours. Employees accumulate vacation hours per week; if they have two weeks of paid vacation per year, one week is available starting in July. The results of these policies are:

·         Employees take short vacations, if any. Long vacations have to wait until late in the year. November and December vacations hamper most corporations, preventing them from following plans.

·         Employees take no vacations. Some companies pay employees ½ their salary for lost vacation time. This may sound like a good deal, but there are serious problems with families that don’t have time together.

·         American families are falling apart. Parents feel guilty spending time with their kids when they could be working. Corporations create policies and environments that present unsolvable quandaries for employees. (The office Christmas party has become mandatory.)

Corporate culture is an incredibly powerful influence in American society, but seems to be unable or unwilling to take responsibility for the future of America. Instead, offshoring (the process of sending American projects to contractors overseas) is effectively spreading corporate culture across the planet. As a result, employees in India, China, Taiwan, and other nations are having medical issues (both physical and emotional), resulting in rising medical and insurance costs and challenging the low wages paid our overseas replacements.

Corporate culture has split up families by forcing employees to choose to move or lose their jobs. The concept of the neighborhood is no more, because the strict work week, yearly calendar, and long commute to the office prevent employees from having any social life at home. The conflicting requirements on management are being pushed down, placing the employee in impossible situations. Under enormous emotional pressure, employees face complicated insurance policies, retirement policies, vacation policies.

Behind all this, the American work ethic is going strong. Good corporate management recognizes this as one of the advantages of hiring Americans. Most Americans want to work and are willing to work hard. The challenge is how to employ them correctly. How to utilize their strengths and prevent damage to their minds and bodies.

Scientific research on the need for a natural daily cycle indicates this may play a large part in the obesity epidemic as well as the depression epidemic. Expectations are changing, based on psychological research, and corporate management should address them. Employees go through the aging process. Parenthood is perhaps 1/3 of an employee’s overall life employment expectancy. Workloads and productivity that depend on unrealistic expectations must be adjusted. Winter storms will happen – employees should be practiced in working at home, since technology now provides advanced warning. Telecommuting can and should be the norm, allowing people to spend more time in the home, perhaps cooking healthy meals and parenting their children.

It is time for employees to take back their lives, their health, and their families and neighborhoods. This is the new challenge for American corporations.

Unfinished Projects

When knitting a certain pair of socks became impossible, my dear Nana and I had a formal unravelling ceremony, complete with the disposal of the terrible pattern book that promised so much, yet explained so little.

We made three separate trips to the fabric store, purchasing and returning the yarn, the needles and the yarn again. These socks required a particular brand and type. We learned the color selections were very limited, and when we finally compromised, Nana began to knit. Within a few minutes, I heard a little voice. "Shit." A needle clattered to the floor. I investigated, and was horrified to see four needles at work at the same time!    "That looks hard," I said, feeling a little guilty. After all, I had chosen the pattern; Nana wanted to knit the socks for me.

I've never made a pair of socks. My knitting projects are challenged at the mere shape of a rectangle. Nana, on the other hand, has been knitting her entire life, and had recently finished knitting a Pug dog. The sock project, however, was doomed to fail. Not far along, Nana realized the instructions were incomplete. Our abandonment of the sock project was a strategic withdrawal. Between her determined persistence for three days, and her gracious acceptance of the futility of the endeavor, Nana demonstrated an important emotional boundary. She knew when to stop trying to make it work.

Will Nana ever try to make those socks again? I suspect she could make them with her eyes closed; but she has other things to do. For Christmas, she knitted my daughter a Husky dog.

Ludwig Beethoven left us perhaps the most famous symphony ever - the Ninth - unfinished. Though he was deaf, and died without completing the composition, Beethoven's Ninth is legendary, fun, and incomplete. Perhaps his most famous symphony is greatly enjoyed, although he never finished it.

During the long weekend of the 2013 blizzard, it was hard to find things to do. Cabin fever sets in quickly these days, so we learn to plan ahead. In addition to the milk, bread, and batteries, we bring home a good book. This was the time to work on projects, and perhaps resurrect those that have been left unfinished.

A small plastic box contains grey and brown crocheted squares, left to me by my grandmother, Eudocha Jean Richard. Ten years ago, Grandma Dolly passed away, leaving her legacy in her gifts. Grandma was the knitter, the cake maker, and the seamstress. Raggedy Ann and Andy, Mary Poppins, and even a flip-flop doll with a long skirt that had two heads - one sleeping and one awake. (Grandma used the fluff from her dryer to stuff her dolls.) The little box of squares is my legacy. I will relearn crocheting and complete that project for my Grandma Dolly.

Getting out after the big storm, I dropped in to see my girlfriend. I arrived to find her happily ensconced in finishing abandoned quilting projects. Mining her storage bins, she unearthed scraps and starters, batting and sheets, spending the snowbound days in contented creation. She had three new quilts completed. A knitted shawl was next, needing  just a collar. The sun was finally shining on the drifts of snow, the clouds cleared from the bright sky. Spring is many weeks away, still,  but we have made plans to start another project together.

Nobody starts a project thinking to leave it unfinished. But if we demand the completion of every project, we will be unlikely to start any projects at all. And if we stall on a project too long, we get frustrated. There are so many more things we'd like to be doing, like knitting dog!