At the firm’s barbecue, the meat served is yours – 05/29/2023 – Vera Iaconelli

For some time now, the word family has been circulating in the corporate world as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The analogy brings up some interesting contradictions. It’s hard to imagine a family in which everyone works hard for the extreme luxury of a few. Usually, the opposite happens: parents work hard to take care of the children and elderly people under their care. This means that the most fragile, in conditions of greater dependence, are the most assisted. There is nothing more inappropriate to think about companies and their cumulative logic of ultra-unequal distribution.

Family ties would be based on love and selflessness, but let’s be honest, how many colleagues would donate a kidney to you? Competition and cooperation are characteristic of relationships between relatives, especially siblings, but the trips that occur in companies are only comparable to what happens in families that are notable for their dysfunctionality. If business were family, it would be one you were better off not being born into, as in “Succession,” “The Crown” and other family-business enactments. The one where you sell your soul to stay in the game and you can’t leave because you don’t have a soul to sustain yourself outside of it.

Abusive, unfair or nasty bosses and companies aiming to extort the workforce in exchange for a poorly paid and unsecured contract are the norm. But this is not the only source of suffering. One of the biggest attacks on mental health is not recognizing the experience, the denial that makes us doubt ourselves. In this case, often the subject can only respond with the symptom. The denial of exploitation —embedded in the ideology of the family business— is just as worrying as poor working conditions.

Getting sick can be an honorable way out of an unworthy work situation. Even the glamorized: how can I be suffering when I work in a company that has a ping-pong table, a room with beanbags, flexible hours and an amusement park decor? Isn’t that what everyone wanted?

For many, the only way out is the diagnosis of depression and anxiety. It arises as mysterious conditions brought about by the failure of neurotransmitters. If everything is fine and I’m bad, I must be doing something wrong. Missing yoga, Himalayan salt, meditation, psychoanalysis, triathlon! Few wonder if it makes any sense to work in a scheme in which one is totally disposable while at the same time selling the idea of ​​joy, collective work and meritocracy.

When people complain that Generation Z is less prone to the current job market and the acquisition of wealth, they forget to ask what this behavior is responsible for. They are young people who saw their elders dedicate themselves to work in an insane way to reach old age with little prospect of a decent retirement. The time to enjoy life, which is projected after the arduous journey in search of stability, is not very promising for this generation.

Another issue is that the accumulation of assets, so highly valued among us, is no longer organized along the axis of cars-real estate-pension. Young people no longer imagine themselves fighting for years for the increasingly unlikely acquisition of this heritage. Being a generation that understood that the end of the world is always lurking, they can only live in the now.

Finally, if the company were a family, employees would inherit something in the end. But in the world of uberization, not even compensation can be expected.

Healthy environments are built with justice, loyalty and transparency. The rest is worth as much as the plastic cup at the firm’s barbecue, where the employee’s meat is always served.

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