Hi guys,
First of all, and that needs saying: I don’t mean to sound entitled, I know that having a job at all is lucky, and that the corporate world provides invaluable financial security. I know what it’s like to not feel safe, I come from a poor family, neither of my parents could even go to high school and both had to do crazy hours at underpaid jobs which eventually wrecked their health. So I really get it, in many ways, a corporate job is a privilege.
BUT I am really desperate for advice right now: how are you supposed to survive in there!?
Nobody is straightforward, it’s almost as if by being too authentic upper management would run the risk of having to face the fact that none of what we do here matters. We’re not making the world a better place (in fact, for the most part, we’re contributing to making it slightly worse) and we’re not helping anybody. If my company disappeared off the face of the earth tonight, nobody would care. I think the pandemic really did hammer the point: most corporate jobs are useless to society and only indirectly contribute by providing people jobs so they can buy things.
So whatever, we don’t work in the ER and that’s that. And my question isn’t even about why the corporate workplace breeds narcissist idiots. My question is about how do you deal with that. Like concretely, how? If one of my boot-licking coworkers or some humanoid rat from management says the most out-of-this-world demented shit amounting to “team building exercises are more important than your dying relatives, hope to see you on Tuesday” or “I worked all night on the quarterly business review”, how do you keep a straight face and stay in character? How do you respond when you don’t know how to think like that??
I have found myself absolutely fuming despite my best attempts to contain myself. My emotions just get the best of me. So I am looking for some very down-to-earth practical tips about how to respond. Is there something you can say in your head? Does meditation help? Exercise? Have you guys found something that helps you get through the corporate day and preserves your mental health?
Again, I know that we have it good in the western world in this day and age, and that corporate jobs are as comfortable as can be considering the history of labour, but I don’t think it’s a reason to ignore the specific, albeit less significant, problems that we encounter in the corporate world. I’m just looking for some advice here!