Perverted by Language

The company you work for is not your friend. It is not your champion, and despite the messaging in those HR emails, your company is not your family. Your company is a monolith with a singular goal: to make money for its shareholders (or in the case of privately held companies: to make money for its owners). No amount of company softball games, or gym discounts, or trust fall exercises can change that simple fact.

This is excellent. Terrence Doyle on the Orwellian language of employers (and the system at large).

America—especially corporate America—is the land of building shit up, and then immediately tearing shit down once it has lost its polished veneer. America hates a patina. Because it’s a land run by advertising and marketing, the compulsion to abandon perfectly good things has spread like an aggressive cancer into our private lives. Take the term starter home, for example. Buying one home and living in it forever is apparently not good enough—one day you may become a millionaire, and your decent two bedroom ranch just won’t do. Or, you know, buy one house and live in that perfectly good house forever! Do not let corporate lingo—and general Keeping Up With The Jonesing—influence the way you feel about your position in life.

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About

Robert Wringham is the editor of New Escapologist. He also writes books and articles. Read more at wringham.co.uk

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