insecurity at the office

Music: Grand National: B-Sides, Remixes & Rarities (2007)

This morning my mother and I talked about her job, her third new position in as many years. She is in her sixties, from a generation and community in Georgia that did not stress a college education, and so about a decade or so ago corporate America’s new bureaucratic style, coupled with collapse after collapse hastened by corporate greed, started givin’ her the squeeze. She has the kind of experience people really want for their payroll and benefits departments, but the lack of a college degree creates issues. The details of the past few years in her work life are not important, since I suspect we can easily fill in the dots. Suffice it to say that companies hire her to do the job of three people, which she does, but only by staying in until 9:00 p.m. When it seems the overtime has become a permanent feature and the company fails to hire the help they promised, she moves on. She’s simply getting worked to death.

What I want to write about, though, is the mood and style of the corporate office. She started working at the age of 18, she says, when companies were run differently, on a kind of “family model.” “Everyone knew everyone, we had company picnics, the president of the company would stop by and say hello.” Now the “bosses” don’t even bother to show up. She described how the most senior boss in her department “never says hello.” “He only comes around when there’s a problem,” she said. “He has no tact, he just barks.” My mom then told a story where her most immediate supervisor---a woman who gave her employees very fancy holiday gifts as a sign of caring---came from the senior boss’ office in tears on Friday. My mom reported a situation had come up, that her immediate boss handled it and it resolved itself, and then went to tell senior boss what had happened. He told her what she should have done, and apparently in a not-so-nice way. “We just warm bodies to management,” she said. “I’m insecure. I know that, and I always will be. But the workplace is just not the way it used to be.”

Of course, we know from the labor history of the United States that it was much worse, and could be. But I think there’s some truth to my mother’s experience: the (corporate) workplace used to be one in which loyalty was a cultivated virtue. This created a sense of security that is lacking in today’s corporate culture. I explained to my mom that I think it was that “family model” feel that made the academic life appealing to me in my twenties. My time at the University of Minnesota very much felt that way, there was a sense of security as a grad student (and I think if I went to a less “humane” department I probably would not be an academic today). My mentors were akin to “bosses,” I said. If there was chewing out, it was in the form of comments on term papers in red ink. Unlike my mother’s senior boss, though, when criticism was necessary it was always book-ended by compliments for what one did right. “But,” I said, “there are also sink-or-swim models in the academic workplace, and a number of programs were once associated with that mentality.” Everyone knows the horror stories about such-and-so Dr. Bigname whose office was a alternately a funeral parlor or vomitorium, a high-pressure zone in which sadism flowed freely, presumably to make the student stronger. We see the same mentality in the blind-reviews of some associate editors, too: tearing the author a new orifice to improve his or her scholarship (kinda reminds me of the bumper sticker humor, “the beatings will continue until morale improves”).

I then said to my mother that I see the academy changing too, shifting from the possibility of a “family model” to the factory/warm body model. One of my senior colleagues described my current department this way at dinner a couple of years ago: “Josh, you know why we hired you?” he asked rhetorically. “Well, one would hope because you wanted me,” I answered. “You’re a good factory worker. You produce lots of widgets,” he responded. I don’t know how widespread this sentiment is among my senior faculty, but I sort of wanted to punch this colleague in the face because I dislike thinking of myself this way, and I really dislike thinking of my department as a widget factory. Later at the same dinner the visiting professor whom we were entertaining asked what I planned to do after I get tenure. “To slow dooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwnnnnn,” I answered. My floor-supervisor colleague then said, “and you’ll have time to think more deeply.” Apparently my widgets are shallow, and the trade off for productivity is in terms of quality (my answer to this colleague, you see, is “ShitText”).

Of course, there is another extreme, as some people really dislike the family model: I’ve heard a number of stories about how departments were too familial---the chair insisting on proofing everyone’s syllabus and having faculty dinners every other weekend, this sort of thing. I wouldn’t like too much loyalty; that becomes servitude. There's gotta be a balance to strike between loyalty and community and private life.

Nevertheless, post-tenure review is apparently sweeping the academy and adjunct positions are exploding according to this or that survey. This is bound to transform the academy into what my mother deals with every business day: a workplace that is cold, dronish, and Kafka-esque. It seems to me that part of the battle we in the academy are waging against neo-liberalism is not just for benefits, wages, and tenure security, but also for a sort of family model department that is on the decline. In a decade will I dread going to the office because no one peeks into my door and says “hello?” I noticed this past year I have been doing that less, not wanting to interrupt my junior colleagues that seem to be working away toward what little security we can achieve (tenure). Maybe I should interrupt them more just to say hello? Hmm. A New Year’s resolution, perhaps?