Are We Having Fun Yet? The infantilization of corporate America

[BridgeTheGap]

If you’re a loyal employee like me, you occasionally check your company’s vision statement to make sure that all the t’s in empowerment have been crossed and the i’s in mission have been dotted. But if you come across buzzwords like excellence and leadership, you should know that your corporate culture is sadly behind the curve—those terms are as ’90s as Reebok Pumps, Zima, and Total Quality Management. There’s a new core value on the loose, and it goes by the name of Fun.

Witness the August issue of Inc. magazine, the self-declared “Handbook of the American Entrepreneur.” Emblazoned on its cover was “Fun! It’s the New Core Value.” Beneath that was a photo of Jonathan Bush, CEO of athenahealth, which helps medical practices interact with insurers. Bush was tearing his shirt apart to reveal a Batman costume, the same getup in which he gave a full presentation to a prospective client after making a deal with one of his employees that if the latter lost 70 pounds, the management team would dress as superheroes for a day.

And that’s just the beginning. There are 18 pages of similar stories to instruct and inspire employers to keep their employees happy at all costs, because happy employees make for happy customers. There are rubber chickens, Frisbee tosses, mustache-growing contests, pet psychics, interoffice memos alligator-clipped to toy cars, and ceremonies that honor employees for such accomplishments as having “the most animated hand gestures.” At Aquascape, a water gardening supplier based in St. Charles, Illinois, perks include on-campus wallyball courts, indoor soccer fields, air hockey, Ping-Pong, billiards, yoga and aerobics classes, a company pool and hot tub, and eight themed nap rooms (Native American, Ohio State, etc.) so that employees can sleep (sleep!) at work.

Here at the Weekly Standard, where the clocks stopped around 1957, our office is mercifully free of such managerial fads. About the closest our bosses come to official levity is the “inspirational” poster in the mailroom. My nonjournalism friends aren’t quite as fortunate.

http://tinyurl.com/2x9gjp

[Demeter]

1. Sounds Like Bread and Circuses To Me--Shades of Rome's Downfall

Is there something wrong with acting and being treated like a professional adult for 8 (and only 8) hours a day, 5 days a week?

[Fredda Weinberg]

3. Well, we pride ourselves on a happy work environment. Honestly,

we do have fun ... it's too stressful otherwise. It's adult humor - and definitely has a place when the job's gotta get done.

[skypilot]

2. kick...

...for reading later. Thanks

[comtec]

4. Pay me on time, don't make my life miserable

those are my two real requirements of a workplace.
I expect customers to make my life... interesting, being in support.
I expect office politics to be... interesting.
As long as i'm not punished for doing my job, I'm good :)
Not to say i'd turn down A N Y of the above mentioned perks ;)

[skypilot]

5. The more I read of this article...

...the more these places sounded like the first circle of hell. A little fun in the workplace can be a good thing, no doubt, but "coercive joviality", as the article eventually got around to describing it, is something that I'm probably too old to tolerate. There are days when you simply want to put your head down and do your work and environments like the ones described in this article sound terribly intrusive. There also seems to be something a bit passive aggressive about it. I wonder how the employees who aren't up for the constant "fun" fare with their bosses and coworkers.

[groovedaddy]

9. Poster: The beatings will continue until morale improves!!! n.t

[skypilot]

11. The beatings will continue...

Yeah, with beanbags and marshmallows, apparently. The horror.

[Forrest Greene]

6. And If You Don't Have

...fun, or if you don't have enough fun, or if you don't have the right kind of fun, or if you don't have fun when you're supposed to, why then we'll mark your name down in a book, start a paper trail to ward off your suing us when we fire you without cause, & send you down to the company psychiatrist. Oh, and would you mind peeing in this cup?

Have fun!

[Cogito ergo doleo]

7. Corporations are trying to infantilize America.

Think of all the baby words - google, yahoo, wiki, wi, squidoo, youtube, cookies. Phones named chocolate, blueberry. Microsoft's MY this, and MY that. And the new little cars, made by a company called Tata, look like clown cars. In three or four ads running now, the music is extremely infantile. There's also a trend in movies and ads to include gross elements - things we thought were uproariously funny (and still do in some cases), but were taught to keep to ourselves, when we were kids. Hello erectile dysfunction, goodbye privacy, decorum, elegance and dignity.

Article about a book on this subject:

CONSUMED
How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole

Immediately after 9/11, President Bush addressed the nation. Here was a chance to bring a grieving people together -- to articulate shared purposes and ask for shared sacrifice. Instead, all the president asked of us is that we keep doing what Americans do . . . and shop. Not exactly Churchillian, but if Benjamin Barber is right, Bush was just tapping into the spirit of our times. In Consumed, Barber argues that shopping is pretty much the only common purpose Americans have left. For two generations, consumerism and citizenship have been battling it out for America's soul. And consumerism has won.

Most of us tend to think of market capitalism as an essential contributor to liberty and democracy, both because it's an engine of material prosperity and because it underpins freedom of choice. Barber argues persuasively that this positive relationship between capitalism and democracy did exist when capitalism was about producing goods that met human needs. But those days are long gone. Now, "needs" must be created: Producers and marketers of goods and services have to convince those with money to buy them. Viagra and Botox become readily available here while drugs to combat life-threatening malaria and diarrhea are not in developing countries.

In a never-ending effort to make consumption the centerpiece of every American's existence, marketers have succeeded in infantilizing adults ("kidults," Barber calls us). We're increasingly governed by impulse. No wonder consumer debt and personal bankruptcy have never been higher. Feeling dominates thinking, me dominates us, now dominates later, egoism dominates altruism, entitlement dominates responsibility, individualism dominates community, and private dominates public. Imagine having the ship of state guided by leaders elected by a nation of 12-year-olds. That, according to Barber, is what we've got.

Barber is a distinguished political theorist who for years has been writing about the deterioration of "civil society" and what must be done to reclaim it. Many others have criticized our obsession with materialism and consumption, a theme he explored in Jihad vs. McWorld, but Barber's aim is not to be a scold. The Reagan revolution convinced us that turning the market loose would be good economics and good politics. Barber, in contrast, argues that "Once upon a time, capitalism was allied with virtues that also contributed at least marginally to democracy, responsibility, and citizenship. Today it is allied with vices which -- although they serve consumerism -- undermine democracy, responsibility, and citizenship." In other words, in the modern era, it's not so much democracy and capitalism as it is democracy or capitalism.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/06/AR2007040600049.html

[katty]

8. it's hilarious--a pep rally, the vision: Global Gulag-deal w/it!

[mwb970]

10. I am amazed at how much attention is spent on toys and celebrities these days.

I mean by adults! The "big buzz" always goes to toys like iPods or Internet-camera-game cell phones and non-entities like Anna Nicole or Britney. No wonder we ended up with bush. Nobody's paying attention!