*even though it’s trying…
First, if you are waiting for any large corporation to really care about you remember that the words “Abandon all hope ye who enter” where written on the office doors long before Dante thought them up. If you find yourself in the precarious position of being on the inside looking out remember the following…
1. If someone says “good morning” it’s usually bull – they just haven’t started work yet. If you meet someone who actually waits for the answer when they ask “How are you today” see number 2.
2. Nobody in the business world is your friend – remember the old adage “just because you aren’t paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you”. Old adages have been around so long because they universally apply. What is more they have to have come from somewhere. Remember “Two face” isn’t just a villain in a Batman comic book – if someone smiles it generally means they are up to something. This is not to say I haven’t met a few friendly faces over the years. There has even been one exception. Still I find the best place to look for a friend is at home.
3. Even if you are on top of the hill it can roll in your direction. The person who first said “everything rolls downhill” never worked in the business. While a rolling stone may gather no moss a passing buck picks up speed so fast it sets land speed records – and contrary to popular opinion shit DOES roll uphill. Remember the old adage from the theater “be nice to the people you meet on the way up, you will meet the same person on the way down.” More than once as I climbed the corporate ladder I saw someone from the top falling past me on their way back down.
4. Thomas Jefferson would never make it past an internship today. The corporate world, like government, is controlled by a handful of powerful people. When Jefferson wrote wrote the Declaration of Independence he was of the opinion “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”. Old Tom Jefferson couldn’t have been more wrong; even the President of the United States is elected by a handful of people called the Electoral College rather than those governed. Most people try to make it to the top by standing on the shoulders of whoever is below them on the corporate ladder. If you do somehow make it up a few rungs on the ladder the best thing to do is help someone else up rather than pulling the ladder up after you.
5. The corporate world is about money – lots of it. Most corporations don’t want some of the money they want all of the money. Thomas Jefferson may have thought we are “all endowed by the Creator with unalienable rights including ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ – Tom couldn’t have been more wrong. Steve Jobs was a lot closer when he said, “Why join the Navy when you can be a pirate?” The man who said “Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him.Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity” was much closer to the true meaning of modern business – sadly, that man was Karl Marx. Personally I think Dolly Levi, from “Hello Dolly” had a much better attitude when she said ” Money, pardon the expression, is like manure. It’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around, encouraging young things to grow.”
6. Douglas Adams knew…he is the man who wrote “Bureaucracy is a parasite that preys on free thought and suffocates the spirit.” He is the man who created the Vogans of whom he wrote, “They wouldn’t even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighter