Company Honor

2020-06-13

content warning: violence, sexual violence, rampant capitalism

As I was on my way back to my desk to start on the phone calls, the head of customer service (who is someone I know IRL) flagged me over. She already had a copy of the list and was angry because she thought one of her candidates wasn’t being offered enough money. (She has kind of a complex about her department, and herself by extension, not being taken that seriously in the company.) I shrugged it off and continued toward my desk.

In the break room, she caught up to me again and started yelling, and getting in my space, and posturing aggressively. Which was threatening but not frightening because she is a very small person and I am a very large person. Then she lifted a tumbler glass full of milk over her head like she was going to smash me with it. I was leaning back against the kitchen counter, and with her full reach she could reach my head, so now I was a little frightened. I told her not to hit me, but she swung anyway, and I grabbed the glass from her hand and took it from her without spilling a drop.

She produced another tumbler of milk and swung at me, and I took this one too, again without spilling any.

She pulled out a third tumbler, this one full of water, and held pulled it back at waist height and swung it up toward my chin like a softball player pitching an uppercut.

I wasn’t ready for this one and just kind of reached out to stop her swing, which I did, but because of the sudden stop, all the water in the glass splashed up and hit me in the face. She seemed satisfied with that.

She jumped up onto me, arms around my neck and legs around my waist, and started pressing herself against me sexually, and I am uncomfortable and don’t want that.

We’re still in the middle of a business office, but there’s nobody around, so I start walking–with her still attached and pressing up against me–toward where the offices are.

She realizes that people can see us now and adjusts herself so she’s not so aggressively pressing up against me, and then tries to make it look like we were just in the middle of some kind of swing dance move, and she hops down and kind of shuffles around and does a jig to complete the farce, and walks off.

Moments later, I’m pulled into an office by someone I don’t know and am asked to tell the whole story of what just happened. I tell it all, and I can see because all the offices have floor to ceiling glass walls, that the other person is pulled into her own interrogation.

We’re left alone in our own offices while the leadership team confers for a while, and I pace and sweat it out.

Then we’re all pulled into a conference room in front of the executive team, and I think I’m going to apologized to, but then the CEO (who I’ve known IRL for years and have a friendly relationship with; we’ve gotten drunk together at plenty of holiday parties) announces that I will have to engage in ritual combat with him so he can defend the honor of his company.

He jumps and comes at me with a weird pair of large combat chopsticks, and we have a long drawn out fight on and around the conference room table.

I have no idea what the “honor” of ones company is, nor how one should defend it.

I was thinking about this person specifically, the CEO of this company, this week because he is a natural for the role: big ideas, a visionary who hates the details and minutiae of actually running a business.

He must hate the last couple of months where suddenly there’s a viral pandemic and massive anti-racism protests that he’s suddenly supposed to care about and address as the leader of a business? Obviously they effect everybody and they’re a huge deal and people are deeply and profoundly effected by these things. They are each literally matters of life and death. But he must hate that he suddenly has to spend time on these things instead of actually running his business.

Individuals too are weirdly elevating their companies in these times. Their expectations range from wanting the company to make a public statement, to wanting their company to tell them what to do so that they as individuals don’t feel racist and stop feeing sad.

The company has been elevated to this weird place where it replaces the church I don’t believe in and the extended family I don’t have. These other institutions and groups of actual personal significance.

I think that right now, if a company doesn’t shutter its door because of coronavirus, and if it doesn’t state publicly that black lives matter, then they probably don’t value their employees or the lives of human beings. But I also think we have no right to ever assume that the company does value those things. They’re not your church. They’re not your neighborhood organization. They’re not your family. They don’t have to care. They are a capitalist machine that exists to make money from your labor.

I guess the question is, at what point does the small company go from being a collective of individuals to being a capitalist machine?

Uneducated, unresearched assertion: if your company has more than 20 employees, then your company is not your friend.

tags: #office