Of Paper and Pencil

I have been once again very silent lately. My blog Why Do I Want To Be Rich? had been the prevalent headline for several weeks. Perhaps my desire to improve financially busied me into doing several projects, programs, deals and life’s decisions radical enough over my love for imprinting life-frames in a blog. But it is hurting me to allow July to pass through without writing a blog or two for my blogsite… deciding finally to write about two things often considered mundane: paper and pencil.

But my idea about paper and pencil begins to pop up when I ask a simple question: To whom should we be loyal for? Is it to our company we work for day in and day out? The company gives us salaries and benefits that in turn provide us our basic needs and others to survive. I would always keep in mind my personal view about salaries: a company would give you a 10k salary because it can earn more than 10 thousand pesos by your effort and job responsibilities. And that the company has no passion, no emotions to feel care and love to its workers. Even in its seemingly good doings, it is done so for their own good. When they give something, it is they the giver who are the most happy. That is why I never wonder when every big corporation always has a foundation. Or that tv program who would grant material wishes to someone in exchange that their seeming goodwill would attract advertisers. Such a goodwill that borders with hypocrisy, when genuine affection is actually absent without their use to gain an advantage.

When my partner once did not receive a company bonus because what seems to be a technical maneuver on the part of the company, I told her to accept it willingly. For I know that when the company management decides so, to question their decision is out of question—it won’t do anything at all. And you won’t get any bonuses.

When you want to kick out an employee you no longer want in your company, you can’t just kick him anytime, like throwing paper and pencil to the wastebasket. There are laws that obstruct you from doing it. However there are no laws that govern the mind. For the realm of the mind is hard to conceptualize. When the company wants to kick you out, it will instead create moves that would crumple you like a piece of paper ready for the garbage can. It will wittingly control you by doing programs, memos, not giving of awards and many others that are psychoanalytically brilliant and strategic, created to kick the employee out of the company—conceptualized for the realms of the mind.

Suppose that, by virtue of a corporate politics, the ruling party in the upper management want a dictatorial rule over the corporation or company. The allies will kick out of their way one by one the minority bloc. The

minority’s defense now which holds but little power is getting weaker by every person that is kicked out of their jobs. Let me illustrate something. When a worker, perhaps a supervisor, who belong to the minority bloc and considered by the dictatorial majority a hindrance to their company agenda, the majority won’t just kick her out of the way by terminating her. This might be so risky and costly considering the litigation that might be involved after. This is not cost-effective way. Instead, to save on cost, the majority shall dispose this employee by making her resign in her own will. How? Create moves, designed to embed stealthily a small amount of psychological stress to the employee. This small amount for every move will then accumulate into psychological torture of the employee, bewildering her yet not knowing whom to blame that she could not hold any longer. She would willingly resign from her post.  And a big hurray to the management.

An instructional example of kicking Employee X out of the company in a psychoanalytic way would be the following steps:

1.     Give the rest of the team a productivity awards, but not Employee X. You reason that the employee has not been found productive. (Whatever these reasons are, it does not matter.  You create them; you find them—from tardiness, absences, failure to meet deadlines to unfriendliness, insubordination and disobedience or discourteousness. My boss once told me: “If it’s loopholes you want, it’s loopholes you’ll get.”)

2.      Make a lateral transfer for this employee to another department by reasoning that upon your assessment you find her abilities best fit for this position. Make sure that she won’t fit in her new department. If no departments unfit for her, make a new position for her and design her job responsibilities unfit for her personality.

3.     If still Employee X does not give in, in the previous steps, kick her out by reasoning, she’s not doing anything and she’s not effective. Note that for each of these moves, watch out for the basic mistakes like tardiness and absences and all those mentioned in step 1 to add up on her so-called company violations.

                   Voila!

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It now appears that the rest of this blog is introductory that would eventually bring us back to this question: To whom should we be loyal for? Alvin Toffler in his renowned book The Future Shock, on his observations on the current trend and mass lay off of companies brought about as new fast-changing work responsibilities emerge and technology progress, seemed to suggest that today’s employees should direct their

loyalty to their profession and skills rather than to the company they’re working for.

Perhaps Mr. Toffler also realized that today’s employees are merely expendable assets—no different than paper and pencil—to be used only at a certain time and be disposed of when not useful. And perhaps too I should begin agreeing on my partner to look out for another home that’d treat their people a little more than paper and pencil.

(More like this on: http://ernelcondeza.blogspot.com/ )