Sushi with a fork

When I was a kid I used to watch the Nickelodeon cartoon Rocko's Modern Life. (Who am I kidding, I still watch it these days). Rocko is a subtle critique to the modern world and the industrial ways of living. Today I was reading an excerpt of Arlie Hoschield's The Managed Hear: Commercialization of Human Feeling  and I was immediately transported back to O-town the city where Rocko lives. 

In the cartoon one big corporation owns most of the businesses in the town (Conglom-o), this corporation had many employees that look the same and act the same. Conglom-o, who owns the town has a really funny motto: "We own you". If one was to make a lighter interpretation of these motto one would conclude that they're saying that it doesn't matter what you buy, you'll always end up buying from Conglom-o. But if we make analyze the scene in more detail we can find out that all the workers of Conglom-O look the same because they've lost their personalities and emotions to those of the corporation. That's exactly what Hoschield proposes in her book.  

The extract from the book shows us how Delta Airlines trains its stewardesses to smile, lose their emotions, and apply an emotional role while doing their job. I immediately started to think of many examples where a job does not only requires you to give your labour for a wage, but to give your emotions and to fake an emotional state for a wage. The first example that came to my mind was the phone representatives of my cellphone carrier that I have been in touch with for the last week. Everytime I call I get the same answer, the same speech, the same joyful tone of voice and the same happy way of dealing with an angry customer. It doesn't matter if it's a male or female representative I always get the sense that I'm talking to the "corporate personality". That was true up until last Wednesday when I was left on hold for about 20 minutes and the rep forgot to switch the hold music on. I got to hear all the conversations that were going on in that call center and especially the one being held by the representative next to where the headset my rep was working with was left. This guy started giving out the same speech I was given and I started to imagine a room full of people dressed in the same way, wearing red ties and black suits, with the same faces. It was the clone wars (from Star Wars) all over. About 4 minutes into the call (and into my hold - assholes who make their customers wait) the representative started to lose his temper and his personality came out as he started to demand some respect from the customer. He was clearly overwhelmed by the angry customer. Having worked at customer service for a period of my life (heck! I think I'm still in that area right now) I knew how he felt. I've never felt that having a corporate speech and losing your personality to that of the corporation is a good thing to do. Even though all the experienced managers who are control freaks want it that way (it's my blog, I don't have to be politically correct, right?).

So, to make a long story short the representative lost his corporate personality and showed that its really difficult to sell your personality as part of the whole package you sell as work. The problem I see is that the idea that people need to hide their emotions at work is a bit too much for anyone to handle and stay un-alienated by their work.  Let's define alineation as the loss of your true personality and values for those of the corporation you work for. Alienation causes you to become resentful and even violent towards the institutions that make your life lose meaning. 

What my empirical observation tells me is that the raise of all the self-help industry, the proliferation of so many new cults and religions and the creation of opposition groups is all a result of the alienation created by "control freak" corporations who want all their employees to act and smile in the same way. Employees who fake their emotions to fit certain work persona are in fact being hypocritical during work. They are hiding their emotions and they're learning how to control their emotions to give certain images to the customers they're serving.  Finally, these customer service employees will end up feeling distant from themselves and commiditising their emotions. 

Emotions are considered to be very personal feeling and that are indeed part of our originality and our essence. Losing it to corporations is the ultimate sacrifice for work, and as a world of broadening inequality arises the only way to achieve a higher income is to sell your emotions to others. The selling of emotions is out in the market since very long, but now it has permeated the majority of fields of work.All establishments want happy people so we need to fake it in order to be employed. This situation has made many workers feel unhappy about their work and their lifes in general. People do not know who they are any longer, they don't know if they're faking their emotions in their personal lifes as they do in their work life.  They're trying to find meaning for their lifes in activities and institutions that are removed from theirselves.

Consumerism, fundamentalisms, radical religious cults, tribes of drug users,  and tribes of any kind are all activities and groups that emerge and gain power as we lose the ability to find our essence inside us. We end up being Conglom-o employees who look the same and act the same. We all smile and are supposed to be happy at work, to show no sadness and to become robots. 

The simple solution for this will be for the company to strive to make their employees find true happiness rather than teaching them how to fake it, or forcing them to learn how to fake it. Of course this will require for managers to trully care about their employees which seems to be too much to ask to the average manager who has also selled his emotions to the corporation. Having happier people will lead to better results and also to a culture where consumerism and meaning are not products that one can buy, but states one can achieve by socializing with the group their living with. 

This post proposes one problem that is a result of the evolution of work and consumer expectations as our economy turns from a product economy to a service economy. This is turning people unhappier with their living situations and especially with their emotional situations. How do we change this? How can we change the culture of standarization? What can it be done to reduce alienation? What other problems emerge with this one? These are all questions we need to ask ourselves and work on if we want to help us find a true meaning in our life. 

In conclusion, capitalism and especially the evolution of consumer expectations as they're faced with more human interaction everyday has made companies believe that they need to control the personality and the experience of their employees. Even though it is true they need to provide a excellent experience the path of control to provide that experience is a bad idea. They need to focus on the wellbeing of the employee in order to guarantee the better experience for their customers and not force their employees to become something they aren't and to commiditise their emotions as they do it.  This subject is much more vast than the parts I've covered and I hope we can continue the discussion in the comments.