A secure job with a large, blue chip, big name corporation. A decent salary. What more could you want?
Actually, quite a lot…
Money or security, or worse – both together, create a golden cage for many people. They hinder you from doing what you really want in life.
And once the cage door is shut, it’s very difficult to get out. You become a corporate slave with no freedom or control over your work. I know. I was once in that situation.
Leading a life of corporate slavery
Work in the typical modern office of a large corporation is often numbingly boring. It gives you little chance to express yourself creatively.
Your day is taken up with pointless meetings and reports full of meaningless corporate jargon. Endless layers of management and supervision, yet no-one wanting to be responsible for making a decision.
The tedium of brain-numbed colleagues resigned to their fate infects the whole environment. The pseudo-motivation you’re expected to bring with you.
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It makes little difference which position you hold in the hierarchy
Whether you’re a data-entry clerk, a graduate entrant, a middle manager or a specialist professional, it matters little. Cubicle horror is the same fate shared by all in such environments.
You might like to pretend your particular job in the company is different. You have challenges, responsibilities, which make your work interesting and stimulating. But more often than not it’s just self-denial.
Public or private – it makes little difference!
It isn’t just confined to working in the private sector. The fate of the stereotyped civil servant is well known and parodied. There’s not much difference between a large private corporation and a government department. Corporate slavery exists in pretty well all large organisations.
Despite the glossy recruitment brochures and advertisements, or the claims made by “Human Resources”, individuality is the last thing corporations and government departments want to encourage. What they really seek for their organizations are docile, obedient house pets.
The “graduate recruitment programme“
Having a degree is little protection. In fact, it’s graduates who often fare the worst. Led to believe in a bright and stimulating future, they are easily hoodwinked into so-called “graduate level professional entry” positions.
New graduates are ideal fodder for the corporate machine. Yet the positions they are offered are often just the equivalent of low-grade clerical jobs – which 30 or more years ago were filled by high school leavers.
Graduate recruitment programmes are heaven-sent low cost ways for corporate employers to net large numbers of naive young graduates before they become aware of what they are getting themselves locked into.
It’s not even a question of money!
I’ve worked for companies both as an average and above-average salaried employee as well as a highly paid contractor. In both cases, the situation was dissatisfying. It made me realise it really isn’t a question of the money.
A higher income can even blind you to a situation which is basically not what you want. And a golden cage is a golden cage. Satisfying work is not about money. Money doesn’t even come into it.
Hold on and switch off
Once in, it’s then a question of switching off and holding on. And the longer you stay, the worse it gets. As the years are notched up, it gets harder for most people to bring themselves to be honest, recognise their situation and quit. Instead they grumble about their 9-to-5 lot, the organisation, their colleagues, their boss – and their work.
Caught on the hamster wheel of working to pay the bills, people rarely even give themselves a chance to stop and think about their situation.
Just occasionally, in a flash moment when on vacation, or perhaps when suddenly laid off with an illness, they stop to think and gain a momentary insight into their situation. But mostly it’s just back to the status quo, taking the line of least resistance. A living death.
The Germans have a better word for it: “innerliche Kuendigung”. It translates roughly as “privately giving yourself notice” – but then carrying on just the same.
TGIF…
They call it “working nine-to-five”, or “the day job” – as if your life is split irrevocably into disassociated parts: work, which you can’t relate to or carry out only grudgingly and disconnectedly; and “free time” – the bit where you are “free”. Free to live your true life.
The only relief many find is living for TGIF (Thank God It’s Friday) and annual vacations. Taking “sickies” now and then when really desperate. Then the syndrome moves on to the final stage of “looking forward to retirement”. At the end, a few years of “freedom” – and then death.
Individualists need not apply
Even if you decide to change your job and move to another company, you’re required to conform to a culture of line-toeing, mind-wash and double-think which bears remarkable similarity to the ideology expectations of the old Communist regimes of the USSR and the Eastern Bloc.
In corporate America and Europe alike, both your CV and yourself at interviews with “(In-)Human Resources” are expected to quack the correct corporate propaganda, to toe the party line and maintain the pretence of believing in the system.
I’ve seen it replicated all over, in so many companies, so many offices, by so many people, so many times.
People sell their whole day and a large chunk of your lives for such a charade of bullshit, seemingly unable to grasp any alternative. Millions of people feel trapped as corporate slaves in soul-destroying corporate environments or dis-empowered through the dismal choices that are on offer to them.
Amazingly, most don’t take action to change their situation. They opt instead for the perceived safety of staying where they find themselves or just accepting their lot.
The reason for this is often that they have been brainwashed into accepting it as the normal state of affairs. “Just the way things are in the world of work and earning a living”. It’s very easy for us humans to act like sheep. It seems the safe and correct thing to do.
Do you recognise yourself as someone trapped in this situation?
A life not lived authentically, in a job or organisation which doesn’t allow your full potential to thrive and express yourself, is a life wasted. Many corporate jobs just don’t give people the chance to do this.
The first step is to wake up!
If you feel the same way, then there is a way out. You don’t have to resign yourself to a living death working in the corporate sector for large or not so large companies.
You have abilities and skills which can flourish in the right environment. We all have much more to offer than surrendering to a life of docile corporate drudgery in an office cubicle.
You can do better!
You CAN break free, create something worthwhile for yourself and others and live life as it really should be lived. You CAN do work which is fulfilling.
You CAN escape from corporate slavery – by taking full responsibility for yourself. Demand and create something better and give real meaning to your life. It’s not even all that difficult.
When you start to open your eyes and look around, you begin to realise what possibilities are out there waiting for you to grasp them.
It’s something most of us have the potential to do. It’s something we have the right to do. It might not be something for everyone. But for some of us, it’s something we should and must do. It’s just a question of vision, motivation, know-how – and resolve.
Break Out and Create Something Better!
So first resolve to do just one thing: Break out of the 9-to-5 and start creating a better future for yourself!
I’ve set up BreakingOut.NET to help people who think the same way as I do.
I want to help people find viable alternatives to the corporate nine-to-five. I want to inspire people and assist them in getting much more out of their lives than what they’ve been led to expect.
BreakingOut.NET is a work-in-progress and things may be a little rough and ready and disorganized at times, but I hope you’ll stick with it.
Join Me Today!
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Written by kevin
Topics: Kev's Diary