Re: A Condensed History of The Corporate Asylum
by The Inmate
In Which The Author Attempts to Justify this Web Site
Nor I hope will it be considered presumptuous for a man of low and humble status to dare discuss and lay down the law about how princes should rule . . . to comprehend fully the nature of princes one must be an ordinary citizen.Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, 1514
We are the lucky ones--us peons. Those of us at the bottom of the totem pole, the first rung of the ladder, we, the unsung heroes, the trench dwellers, the Privates in a bin of four-star Generals--we have what others dream about. We are couriers. John Wayne would be proud!from The INMATE, the publication, 1988
As a part-time employee for a major overnight express company I am required to work one Saturday a month. In order to escape the gruesome slaughter of my weekend I am often successful in convincing my fellow couriers that the senseless murder of their weekend is less detrimental to the evolution of the human race than mine. In late 1986 and early 1987 I posted terse pleas in the company warehouse: "I need someone to work Saturday. See Glen(Yes, I am aware that I have now revealed my real first name.)" When these requests became ineffective I transformed myself into a desperate and devious individual. Once I utilized pictures from a backpacking trip in the Sierras with the following caption: "Working on Saturday is not Just a Job . . . It's an Adventure." The photographs of the majestic mountains, towering pine trees and me carrying a package over a snow-fed stream had absolutely nothing to do with what truly occurred on Saturdays, but this system of selling worked for most corporations so I tried it. It worked for me too. Another photograph starred me with a life-sized cardboard image of Ronald Reagan. I handed him an envelope with our company logo on it. The caption read: "Guaranteed Possibilities! Look What Happened to Me! Just Imagine Who You Might Meet on a Saturday. This Is Not Just Another Opportunity, This Could Be the Ultimate Life Changing Experience." Another free weekend. Finally a politician who actually did something for me.My reputation as an anti-Saturday fanatic grew monthly as did the difficulty of persuading my colleagues to take my place. A few demanded extra cash. Outrageous! I refused that tactic fearing a depraved precedent might be set. Others offered to trade Saturdays with me. I was not interested in trading--I always had plans for Saturdays: sleeping in, watching movies, reading, eating garlic pizza and playing basketball. Finally, in good political and corporate form I decided if short, simple, articulate pleas were not effective than perhaps long, obscure ones would be. In June of 1987 I put together a small paper on my newly acquired Mac Plus. In the lead article, "HELP," I explained that the extra money I would make on Saturday would put me in a higher tax-bracket and therefore it would cost me money to work. I posted the paper on the company bulletin board and someone, who obviously was not worried about the higher bracket, consented to destroy their weekend.
After acquiring some seniority and a shameless reputation for wanting two Sabbaths per week I never again used the paper for dispensing with Saturday labor, but like corporate programs that outlive the crisis that spawned them I continued to write it. In the beginning it was a humorous paper about people and events around our station: Christmas parties, new uniforms and defensive-driving seminars. It was safe-- uncontroversial. It was a parody of the company newsletter and I called it The DHLINMATE. It did not, however, take long for my fellow employees to begin referring to it as simply, The INMATE and I dropped our company's name from the title after the ninth issue. By that time the paper was distributed to every employee at our office and my station manager was showing it to employees at other locations in our nationwide company. I was often verbally abused if I forgot to give someone their own copy. Some of my colleagues even demanded that I spell their names correctly, and others boldly dared to expect issues of The INMATE on a regular basis. I commented on that blasphemous attitude in the August 1987 issue: "The INMATE is published. Frequency of publication is irrelevant and anyone expecting any kind of consistency should send his check or money order(no cash please) to the Editor. This will not guarantee anything, but it will at least give you reason to hope."
I published three to seven issues of The INMATE every year. As my employer changed and evolved so did The INMATE. It continued to be humorous like the early issues, but it was also biting, cynical, satiric and a lot more fun to write. I wrote about mandated procedures that did not make sense, flawed new programs, condescending company correspondence, changes in policy, daily life as a courier, the depersonalization of the employee, CEO's resignation speeches and general corporate nonsense. Material was plentiful. My colleagues would introduce me to their friends and spouses with, "This is the guy that writes The INMATE." On a couple of occasions I was called into management's office to explain things I had written. The pinnacle of The INMATE's existence occurred when an issue was, unbeknownst to me, faxed to our corporate offices by someone either from Human Resources or trying to tweak HR. The person, whose identity is to this day still unknown to me, ostensibly saw a copy in a station in the midwest that had traveled their via a highly paid management-type from my office--another regular reader. Copies then circulated at corporate headquarters. The lead article was about a new incentive program. I did not like the program. HR did not like The INMATE. When our regional manager, who was a regular reader of The INMATE, was asked during a phone conversation from corporate headquarters, "What's an INMATE?" he answered like any proud reader of The INMATE would, "I don't know." He then quickly called his underling, my station manager, to warn him of the impending interrogations which I found out about when he road with me. Station managers never ride with couriers. He was afraid he might lose his job because he had allowed me to publish it. He was the third station manager to allow The INMATE to be published. For a day or so I was a little worried myself, but things blew over and I later found out that some in management agreed with my opinion about the program(Here's The INMATE Article). I have always been elated that The INMATE according to my sources, actually made it to the CEO's desk.
A close friend of mine who has followed The INMATE since its inception suggested I should write a book, not only about The INMATE, but about corporations and the working world in general. The idea appealed to me. That endeavor began in 1995--a decision that did not even require me to form a task force.
I had been working on the book, which started out as A Modern Ecstasy and finally became The Corporate Asylum: Provided by the Management for Your Amusement for about three years when I decided to attempt the idea as a newspaper column. I have a few a publishing credits to my name but after big mailings by snail mail and e-mail to prospective papers I did not get one taker. Most of the papers did not even send back a rejection slip even though I had provided them with the much publicized SASE. I also attempted to get an agent for the book and contacted a publisher directly(I delivered to this publisher and knew a mailroom guy who said he could get it to the right people). No takers there either. I guess trying get a large corporation to publish a book about the faults of large corporations is a little like attempting to get doctors to contribute to a fund that would eliminate disease.
As this was happening I also acquired internet access--something I had been wanting for a long time. I had always intended to go online with a web site in conjunction either with the newspaper column or the book but had no intention of starting a web site before any of this occurred, if, in fact, it ever did. I have a neighbor who is a computer whiz, who knows some people and I was offered, at a very reasonable price, the opportunity to go on-line with my ideas and thoughts about work. So I did it. And here I am.
I do not know if I will ever publish another INMATE. Working on The Corporate Asylum web site seems to fulfill any need I have to comment on corporate bullshit, but one never knows.
Miguel de Unamuno wrote, "there is always . . . a way of carrying out what one believes to be an absurd operation while correcting its absurdity . . ." I hope The Corporate Asylum contributes to the covert and overt actions performed by thousands of workers in defiance of corporate immovability. Through these actions workers maintain their dignity by asserting enough control over their own lives so as not to lose themselves in a bureaucracy that clamors for their souls, minds and wills. When lumped together these acts can cause real and beneficial change, however minuscule it may be. There are good managers out there. I had one. There are genuinely good companies. I've heard of them. And there are good workers. I am one. There is, however, far too much in corporate America that remains unchallenged and unquestioned. "The unexamined life is not worth living." So said Socrates. I submit that unexamined management practices and corporate procedures make work at best a burden and at worst intolerable.
As The Inmate I do not write as an "expert" looking in. Nor do I write from the top looking down. I write from the bottom looking up. I was in the depths of the corporate ocean for seventeen years with my former employer(a few more years with others) and considered it one of my ambitions never to begin an ascent to the surface. I'll leave that to braver men and women. The view from down here isn't always lovely(Have you ever examined the feces of a corporate giant?), but it's one I've learned to appreciate even though it is, admittedly, an acquired taste. The problems at my company are not unique. I've spoken with enough employees to know that my frustrations are shared by millions. I work at a relatively good company. It's the word "relatively" that interests and bothers me. "Business as usual" is often impersonal and condescending. Innovation, though often cited in company correspondence, is rare.
The INMATE has been in the closet since its first issue in June of 1987 and although we have nearly fifty-three dedicated readers if you include spouses, children and various pets, we are not commonly known throughout the rest of the world, although we have claimed that distinction several times in order to boost readership. We've been underground so long corporate heads have carved gravestones for us. We think, however, every good burial deserves a resurrection. It's time for The INMATE to come back from the dead--and we're going public. I hope it doesn't destroy our reputation.
works cited:Machiavelli, Niccolo, The Prince, translated by George Bull, Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1983, pg. 30.
Unamuno, Miguel de, The Tragic Sense of Life, translated by J.E. Crawford Flitch, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1954, pg. 273.
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