Jackdaw has a post about belonging at work that reminded me that I don’t really belong where I work, either. For most of my life that was fine. I had never belonged anywhere. I’ve always felt like an uninvited and barely tolerated guest in the world as a whole, let alone my school or workplace.
Indeed, I have often agreed with the Count of Monte Cristo, who in Robin Buss’ excellent translation of Dumas’ novel said:
“Perhaps what I am about to say will appear strange to you gentlemen, socialists, progressives, humanitarians as you are, but I never worry about my neighbor, I never try to protect society which does not protect me — indeed, I might add, which generally takes no heed of me except to do me harm — and, since I hold them low in my esteem and remain neutral towards them, I believe that society and my neighbor are in my debt.”
It is hardly a kind or pro-social sentiment, but the Count is on a mission of vengeance and in his own way is giving fair warning to Albert de Morcerf and his friends. He is saying, in an elegant way, that he will not do unto others as he would have them do unto him, but will instead treat others as they have treated him. Kindness for kindless. Cruelty for cruelty. Good for good, and evil for evil, as if he were indeed an agent of Providence.
I am under no such illusions. And my concerns are rather more mundane. I just want to do the job and get paid. Kinda like Mal Reynolds.
I just want to do the job. Then I want to get paid. But there are too many petty people in positions of petty authority who want to run their little worlds in ways that make it harder for other people to do their jobs. Like the asshole Jackdaw works under:
My department is five people, two of whom prefer to work in the office, one of whom doesn’t share her desk, and then me and the other guy, who do. I don’t mind this, he’s always been a perfectly fine deskmate. At one point when the queer employee resource group started up, he put up a pride flag at our desk. I liked it. We also shared some other stuff like a phone charger and some desk fidgets.
I came in today and the desk had been entirely depersonalized, the flag taken down (along with the fidgets and the phone charger) and stuffed in the drawer next to the desk, and for no apparent reason, the pencil cup and the envelopes and whatnot moved to the other side of the desk.
I asked if anybody knew what was up, because I didn’t like the vibe of having our pride flag taken down at the beginning of June, and my team lead told me he’d done it because he wanted the desk to look less lived in. I was reminded that it’s not really my desk, not even the other guy’s and my desk. I put the pride flag back up, because wtf, but it didn’t sit well with me regardless.
It didn’t sit well? No shit, Sherlock. It probably wouldn’t sit well with anybody possessed of a soul. Hell, it doesn’t sit well with me and I don’t even believe in souls.
Maybe Jackdaw's boss was responding to pressure from their boss. Or maybe they were just anticipating trouble from higher up and trying to protect their direct reports. Either way, it’s an unpleasant reminder that one’s workplace is not in any sense democratic and that as an employee one is a subject first and foremost. By which I mean that one is subject to the whims of others who are not necessarily one’s superior in any way that should matter. They merely own the company, or are further up the hierarchy and thus closer to the ones who do.
To me, Jackdaw’s example represents several fundamental issues with how we work in corporate America.
- Office politics is nothing but a series of dominance games.
- Demands that people work on-site are nothing but power plays.
- Corporate DEIB initiatives remain a hollow farce.
And Jackdaw damn well knows it.
Like, I know it's not actually about the pride flag as a symbol, my lead is a cishet guy but I absolutely believe he wasn't thinking about it when he took it down. It's more about the need to aggressively remind me that I don't get to have any sense of being wanted in the office despite the fact that I'm required to be in the office.
Jackdaw was not returning to the office. They had an office at home. What they were returning to was a shared desk in an open-plan corporate panopticon where management could exercise 20th century command-and-control by looking over people’s shoulders as they tried to work in an environment inimical to productivity.
And what good is a queer resource group if a boss can get away with removing a pride flag from a worker’s desk for no better reason than that they wanted the desk to look less lived in
?
What are they going to do?
Send that boss a strongly worded email to the effect that they shouldn’t do that?
Yes, that will certainly fix things.
What good is any identity-based resource group when management repeatedly makes it plain that they only care about you insofar as appearing to care might improve morale and thus make it easier for the business to turn a profit? I would say that corporate DEIB initiatives are a hollow farce, but I think they are worse and more insidious than that. I think these initiatives, this emphasis on identities other than class, are a way to channel people’s impulse to band together to protect their own interests in a way that does not allow them to engage in effective industrial action or force management to engage in collective bargaining. I think DEI is a subtle form of union-busting.
Enlightened bosses are fine with people creating a queer resource group, or a BIPOC resource group, or a womens’ resource group. These groups compete with each other for attention and for the willingness of workers to do unpaid overtime to improve the corporate culture. They provide an illusory sense of improved workplace conditions and they’re much cheaper and easier than dealing with a union.
I had implied before that I was OK with not belonging at my workplace, but it runs deeper than that. I don’t want to belong at my workplace. I don’t want to belong to the firm. I am not human capital. I am not a human resource. I am a man, and any workplace that even slightly resembles The Village is no place for me.
Likewise, I do not want work to become a substitute for a social life. If the only way I can have access to a social life is through my job, I would rather not have one at all. It is bad enough that my access to healthcare depends on my job; my access to community should not also depend on my job as well. It is for these reasons that I maintain that the only valid workplace community is a union.
Just don’t expect me to lead the effort to unionize my workplace. I’m more Kerr Avon than Roj Blake. I’m no idealistic and altruistic leader. I would rather be left alone to do my own thing.