Barbara Ehrenreich and Corporate Culture

Barbara Ehrenreich is a communist and a pothead and, quite possibly, an atheist.

And I love reading her books. (If you doubt my claims about her, check this Wikipedia article. She spends quite a bit of space in Nickel and Dimed fretting about failing her Wal-Mart required drug test because of her pot use.)

Ehrenreich has a keen eye for the economic realities of life in a hyper-capitalist world. In Nickel and Dimed, she examines life on the bottom of the ladder. She works for Wal-Mart, as a server in a chain restaurant, and as a maid. Her reporting in that book is vivid and her analysis sharp.

A couple of weeks ago, I finished reading her follow-up to that book, Bait and Switch. Here, Ehrenreich sets out to explore the world of contemporary white-collar work.

She begins the arduous task of looking for work. She keeps at it for 170 pages. Bait and Switch suffers from a lack of drama when compared to the adventures Ehrenreich recounts in Nickel and Dimed.

It’s a lot less action-packed. Only near the end does much happen. Ehrenreich is finally offered a job selling insurance from her home, a job that promises no office, no benefits, and no salary.

That not much happens is, I think, the point. Ehrenreich’s search for an opening in the wall of the corporate keep is an empty pursuit ending in nothing but a few pep-talks from career coaches and an exploitative job offer.

What she does get is a look at how seeking the graces of corporations changes us. She describes with dead-on accuracy the shape of the “corporate personality”, a persona marked by two distinct traits.

First, the corporate personality hides a merciless coldness, a commitment to profit over every human interest behind a veneer of aggressive niceness. I recognized the type as soon as I read about it. I have known these people. Any behavior, from pressuring employees to neglect their families to firing them outright, is acceptable so long as it’s carried out with the best possible “people skills”. Moral principles don’t apply to any action. What matters is how nice the corporation’s representative was during the interchange.

Second, the corporate personality effuses non-stop enthusiasm for company related trivia. I happened to be working part-time at a national video rental chain a few years ago on the night this company announced it would no longer have late fees.

We were ushered into the back room for a video simulcast of the announcement directly from the CEO.

Before the show went live, our manager said, “I can’t tell you guys what is about to happen, but it’s going to change your lives!”

After the revelation, we lowly clerks failed to show much excitement and were upbraided by our manager for failing to have our lives sufficiently changed. Even at this lowest level, a willingness to fake caring goes a long way.

I realized what the corporation was asking me to do was to play along in its overpowering delusion that getting rid of late fees was the equivalent of getting rid of cancer. It was a tough assignment.

What Ehrenreich sees is that in the hyper-capitalist West, corporations don’t just control our work lives. They set the expectations about how our very personality ought to be shaped. They define the contours of the “good person”. They determine who has a “good attitude” and what kind of person is acceptable. They tell us not just what to buy anymore. They tell us who to be.

Comments

[Milehimama]

I really enjoyed both books, but my complaint with Bait and Switch was her sense of entitlement - she was entitled to have a white collar job at a corporation, with benefits. I don't think that defines the American dream for a lot of people (being your own boss is probably a closer American dream, IMO).

[Dean]

Mama,

I can see why you might say that, but I didn't really pick up on a sense of entitlement.

What I read instead was outrage that we live in a system that makes people dependent on it and then excludes them from its rewards.

[Tertium Quid]

Nice post. I've written some on my blog that corporate property is not really private property and shouldn't be treated as such under the law. Doing so gives corporations rights they should not have which are superior in fact to true private property rights of citizens.

My wife's experience of working for conglomerates and chains is just like yours at the video store: enthusiasm without any real soul.

[Dean]

Thanks.

I've checked out your blog and will be visiting more often.

[Yenah]

I look forward to reading your remarks concerning her first book on life as a worker and writer in Cuba, China, or North Korea.

[Georgia]

I say you are no more of a capitalist than she is. Religious men want to control others. Capitalism is a selfish and self sufficient system in which christianites do not get. I do not see your arrogance sitting right with Jesus.