Way back when, when I was in junior high school and high
school, we would be made to endure what were called “pep rallies.” Not sure if
schools sponsor these annoying spectacles anymore. They shouldn’t.
For these pep rallies, the students would be herded in an
auditorium to watch the cheerleaders cheer and be told we didn’t have enough
school spirit. During one particularly dreary conclave, a mousy member of the
student council who came from a good family and was going to a good school (you
know the type) stood at the podium and told us, “I’m your school spirit and I’m
dying!” Ug! I kid you not. Sadly, no such speech would be made in a school
today.
Even to my young, not-yet-fully-formed cynical mind, I
thought these assemblies were ridiculous. How did they know we didn’t have
school spirit? On what criteria were we being judged? We didn’t attend enough
sporting events? (The few times I went to a football game, the stands were
full.) That we were apathetic and sullen? (Um, it’s called being a teenager.) I
could never understand why we were subjected to this. As long as we went to
school and were reasonably well behaved (we were), why were we being berated
that we didn’t have school spirit? As if that were so important. Wouldn’t we be
better off learning something, like math or English? Sure, the cheerleaders
were peppy, but that’s their job. The rest of us? Not so much.
For an unpopular bottom feeder like me, mocked by
classmates, ignored by teachers, I couldn’t wait to get out of that building
everyday (so I could go home to my equally indifferent family). So maybe you
can understand why these pep rallies were particularly painful for me.
I often think of these high school pep rallies whenever I
get an email at work from upper management telling us how the new direction the
company is going in is oh-so wonderful (of course, they bury the lead in the
fourth graph when they admit about a half dozen people lost their jobs) or
whenever I hear a CEO tell us how important their workers are to the company.
As my late Italian-American mother would say, bull throw. I
don’t believe a word of it, not a word. Like those meaningless pep rallies, all
those empty platitudes do is curb my enthusiasm and make me wanna run and hurl.
Yet we’re expected to peppy and enthusiastic about our work
when it’s pretty clear to us that upper management will get rid of us in a
hurry to save themselves and their drinking buds. (To be fair, the All White
Males Club at my workplace did decide recently not to jettison our department. For now.)
We’re given double workloads, crappy health plans, no or
miniscule raises and bad treatment, yet we’re expected to show enthusiasm for
our jobs. The deck is stacked against us. The system only works for CEOs and
upper management.
At my former workplace, they had a list of core values. One
was respect for their workers and how workers were the company’s most valued
resource. Ha! The former CEO pretty much gutted our division and made the head
of our department (a drunken idiot) cut dozens of staffers.
And it’s not as if we have any recourse. Go to HR? What a
joke! HR’s only job is to protect the company and that means upper management,
not the lowly cubicle dwellers. (Again, to be fair, if you have a problem with
your health care plan, I’ve found most HR people to be helpful.)
One lady I work with now told me her supervisor routinely
criticized her work and told her she was fat. Now, if there was a problem with
her work or office behavior that should be addressed. However, she won an industry
award for her work, so how bad could she have been? No worker should have
personal insults hurled at him or her. That’s workplace harassment. To me, she
seems like a perfectly nice woman, not a high-strung nutcase. So what was the
problem?
When she complained to HR, she was told that it wasn’t their
problem and that she had to work it out with her supervisor. Yeah, right. She
was eventually laid off.
So you get my drift here. If companies choose to treat their
workers like pieces of crap and eliminate jobs by the hundreds, that’s their
prerogative. They cannot, however, expect loyalty or enthusiasm in return from
workers.
