In my experience, the corporate/service world is basically filled with employees who are taught to act like mindless drones. To a certain extent, most job fields have become like that. The only people who I actually considered real “free” individuals were people from really tough blue collar jobs like roofing and concrete. An experience, quick roofer is actually quite hard to find. A lot of those guys were essentially “cowboys” for hire who refused to work full time for anyone, but would negotiate pay with different companies on a job-job basis.
Those are the only people who I've seen who weren't held to any social standards on the job. Their sole purpose was to get the job done. They were expected to be crazy guys, and the main contractors were actually a bit intimidated by them.