Let me start off by saying I'm not talking about today's hyper-partisan, rabid division between Democrats and Republicans. Though that very much is an issue, it isn't the kind of politics I'm talking about. No, I'm talking about the kind of internal politics you see between brown-nosers and straight-talkers, suck ups versus stuck ups, the lazy versus the dedicated. I'm talking about the 25% of the workforce that does 75% of the work. The people who are told they are invaluable by their management team as corporate cuts out their jobs. In an era where the whole world seems to have gone insane, watching people pat themselves on the back about how amazing their cost-cutting measures are while real human beings are dumped like so much trash is beyond ridiculous.
In this case, I'm referencing an instance that happened not so long ago, where the corporation I work for chose to use toxic ideas to try and create jobs...by cutting jobs. This is unfortunately a common theme in retail: boost profits by cutting labor. Despite the fact that statistics have clearly shown that this does not work, companies still keep doing it. They do it every day, in both large and small ways, in a vain attempt to increase the returns for shareholders who will never be satisfied. I watched as my coworkers scrambled to stay hopeful that the layoffs wouldn't change things for them, and nowhere was the opinion on it more divided than among the one group that seemed to be the least impacted: the cashiers.
I will say it was amazing to watch as people's true feelings and natures emerged in the wake of learning they may have a new boss in a few days. Some were campaigning hard and threatening strikes if the manager was removed, replaced, or her position eliminated. This is despite the very obvious knowledge that the decision of whether or not the position stayed was entirely outside the control of the store and corporate would just as happily see all these cashiers fired and replaced with people they wouldn't have to pay as much. Others were crowing about how much they were looking forward to someone else being in charge, as if the change would somehow magically allow them to do as they wished instead of working.
For myself, it was strange to find myself hoping that nothing would change, if only because I believed then (and still believe) that the post-holder shouldn't be having to re-apply for her own job just because they changed the title. But instead I got to watch as eleven managers vied for six positions, a set-up that was designed not to find the best candidates for each role but to pit them all against each other for corporate's amusement. Again, this is where people's true natures came to the fore. Anything and everything that they had done for and to each other was weaponized in an insane game of professional musical chairs where by the end of it no one felt they could trust anyone.
Those eleven managers were all forced to compete in the most vile way possible and in the end they all lost. They lost cohesion as a team, with the "winners" getting the jobs, but also learning just how easily someone they'd thought had respect for them would turn around and stab them in the back in order to save their own skins. As a witness to this, it was disheartening. How can we as employees feel safe to focus on our jobs if we have to worry that every little thing said can and will be used against us in the future? How can a company promote an agenda that doesn't do away with the favoritism, the brown-nosing, and the quid pro quo, and still call themselves progressive? It's disgusting. Then again, that's just corporate culture. They care more about their bottom dollar than the people they trample, abuse and milk dry to get it. They don't understand that the harder they push and the more they cut away, the less sustainable their business becomes.
Until that changes, no one wins.