Corporate View

Oxford English dictionary says corporate means "shared by members of a group." And what a group this is!

Since I started working about twelve years ago, I have been fascinated by the corporate environment. Back then, it represented a challenge. Something that must conquered. And it was this challenge that informed my pre-occupation with learning and accumulating knowledge that one can use to achieve the highest level possible. I saw myself becoming an executive in a major corporation.

The corporate environment represented success in the eyes of many black kids. Working and growing within the hierarchy was the best thing ever a child could dream of. Companies represented a better life to us.

This must be seen in the context that when we grew up, public service jobs were the only options really available to us. Outside that, the only job we could do was become a clerk in the private sector. Of course I am the last generation in the era before the death of apartheid. Apartheid died the year after I completed matric. So I was stuck with the remnants of apartheid while I had to live in the new South Afrika where there were supposedly equal opportunities.

Corporate life sucks. It is the single thing I dislike most about working. Spending nine hours daily at a desk is the worst form of punishment a human can be subjected to. You are subjected to a hierarchy to which you must conform. Hierarchy which is not really receptive to how humans generally relate. There are dress codes to which we must subscribe. So called ethics that are really anti social and which forces people to be cruel against each other in the name of competency.

And then there is competitiveness! You see, this is why working is so wrong. People are supposed to be working against each other in order to beat one another. My take is that people are supposed to support each other in order to excel as a team. Competitiveness breeds individualism. Individualism is against the spirit of being neighbourly. Ubuntu.

But then again, I am an exception to the rule. I seem to hold rather unique and screwed up views about many things. Otherwise people wouldn't be so competitive and ambitious about the corporate world.

If these views were true, many people wouldn't be working now, would they? The flip side also being that the majority of people who work must enjoy what they do, right?

But I do know that I have not been happy working. And I have also seen a lot of miserable people at work.