Corporate Crap-Talk

Thanks to UrbAlt for this.


Yesterday evening I had a discussion with someone who used the word "professionalism". She discussed what she thought was "professional" and "unprofessional". This is someone, who, by the way, has had no corporate experience.

Let's talk about "professionalism" and the way it is used in corporations, businesses and the function it has.

From the Merriam-Webster Dictionary

pro·fes·sion·al·ism noun
\prə-ˈfesh-nə-ˌli-zəm, -ˈfe-shə-nə-ˌli-\
Definition of PROFESSIONALISM

1
: the conduct, aims, or qualities that characterize or mark a profession or a professional person(see 1professional)
2
: the following of a profession (as athletics) for gain or livelihood

I, on the other hand have worked in many corporations, until at the tender age of around 24, I had had enough. I have worked at large multi-nationals such as banks and publishing companies. I have donned the dress of corporations, squeezed my toes in shiny shoes for corporations and written little notes that had nothing to do with life, for corporations.
My experience with the use of the word "professionalism" necessitates a personality schism that is debilitating to the human experience. From my experience, "professionalism" is an alienation from the personal.
I did, by-the-way unwittingly ended up in a corporate environment in my 30s: at an educational institution where it took me no time at all to realize that all the employees of this school were basically serving a hierarchal, corporate structure. Call me naive, but it was the last thing I expected from an institution of learning. While there I worked with the head of the school. She was "professional". She was there before everyone else arrived, always the last to leave. She dressed impeccably, communicating through her clothes, what life she had access to and in which she dwelled. I liked her, if only because she illustrated how the restraints on her humanity through succumbing to a system she truly believed in, was making her miserable. I found her robotic existence fascinating. Oftentimes she elicited feelings of anger mixed with pity from me. She would do things like coldly chastise a cowering employee, or even break down crying in front of me in response to a peer critique. It was like her soul was this hurricane powered by the fuel of competition, access, privilege struggling with her humanity. There were,however, just as many times her humanity triumphed over the stereotypical stoic corporate woman she had allowed herself to become. At this job, I experienced that "professionalism" was often used as a euphemism for not regarding the personal.
The other day I found myself speaking to someone about life. "Soft values", he murmured, as he pulled himself up on his seat and readied himself to get down to some real, "hard?", work. "Excuse me?" I asked, never hearing the term before, but intuitively knowing what he was referring to.
"Soft values." He repeated, as if imparting the definition to me through the utterance of his words. And in a way, he did.
Interestingly enough, there is no current definition for "soft values" on the internet. But by what I could garner, "soft values" refers to anything that requires humanity to triumph over, well profit.
When you work for a corporation, that corporation owns you. It means hanging up your identity at the door whenever you enter its halls. Hell, you don't even have to work at a corporation for you to experience that dynamic: Do you know what one of the original meanings of the word job is?
job 2 archaic
verb ( jobbed, jobbing ) [ trans. ]
prod or stab : he prepared to job the huge brute.
• thrust (something pointed) at or into something.
noun
an act of prodding, thrusting, or wrenching.
ORIGIN late Middle English : apparently symbolic of a brief forceful action (compare with jab ).

I do understand what is intended by the use of words such as "professionalism" and "soft values". What I don't understand is that there are so many worlds and jargons and behaviors that it almost seems impossible for me to participate in this world without suffering some kind of schizo existence that demands that I alter who I am. Like I've said, I've done the corporate thing of donning clothes that well, in the end, are definitely not me. I'm not knocking the fashion, I'm just saying: I'm way more comfortable in a pair of jeans and sneakers than high-heeled shoes and skirts.
I think this is one of the things that confuses many kids the most and disillusions many teenagers. It's during childhood you begin to recognize the double-standards "necessary" for adult survival in our society. Violence isn't good, we admonish our children, while we feed our addictions through film or even the way we may sometimes talk to each other. Beauty is skin deep, we remind, as we heap piles of make-up unto our faces. As we grow up we realize the crude reality that humanity has a price tag: some humans, it seems, is worth way more than others. Huh? The child wonders, and in typical childhood mathematical genius, realize where they think they stand in the equation: I have the new adidas jacket, so I'm ok (for now at least).
Of course there is a need for being "professional". I won't bust my pedicure set and proceed to cut my toenails at the desk. I'm just saying I think its a bit suspect that when I enter Corporation X, I end up, in the end, having to sometimes compromise my values. Why can't we all operate under the one universal law that humanity comes first? Misunderstandings, financial blunders, fear-induced work environments, do they really matter from the perspective of the fact that for example, on the evening of October 8th, as many of 750 meteors an hour could be seen as Earth traveled through streams of dust and ice from Comet Giacobini-Zinner. The comet passes through the inner solar system every seven years. Or were you worrying about your current debt?

I can't fracture my personality anymore. Why would we even ask that of each other? I'm in the process of self-perfection. I want to shine no matter what realm I'm in. I want to support wholeness and bring out the best in others, including myself, all the time. Don't you? I suggest we focus on being more "professional" at being human, first and foremost. I say values shouldn't be soft or hard. There should just be values.

This same person who talked about professionalism also called me a feminist the other day. She says that I'm political. For the record I have never considered myself a feminist. Growing up with writers such as Alice Walker to refer to, I learned fast how limiting a structure such a paradigm can be. I'm not knocking feminists. No matter my blunders, I am, in the end a champion of all Life. I am too political, this person says. As Audre Lorde once wrote, the personal is political. Why can't the world just seem to get that?

Or mabye we are...Occupy Wall Street is, after all, just as inspiring as witnessing streaks of light shooting through the sky.

Thanks for reading,
the lab

Corporate Trash is a pretty cool site.