I was recently forced to attend a training course designed to make us humble minions “think more positively” and “choose to have the right attitude to work”. Cue 100 videos of cheery Americans “making the choice to offer 110 percent customer service and connect with the customer”, silly motivational exercises and general suckiness.
I amn’t even any good at kidding on that these motivate me and fill me with love for my job any more. I’m all burnt out. I’m sitting in a corner fiddling with my wristbands and not shouting out when the trainer goes “Hey everyone, let’s brainstorm! Ten positive things about your job! C’mon!”
That gives me more time to think about these things. What’s it all about, eh?
As all who know me ken weel, I’m not much of a theorist. But I was struck by the ideological implications of this course. The trainer (who was very nice, btw) was addressing an audience who were very low on the totem pole and whose job involves far more enforcement than it does friendly chats over a cup of tea. And yet they’re pushing this “delight the customer” “send them away happy” craziness? The kind of customers we get aren’t delighted that they have to deal with us. It’s a grim reality of life for them, and they would be far happier if they never saw hide nor hair of us, or even better, if we didn’t exist. We’re not jolly service providers. We’re an inescapable fact of life.
Furthermore, another aspect being heavily emphasised is that if you don’t arrive at your workplace brimming with joy then you’re somehow defective. There’s something wrong with you if you don’t Choose to be Positive. Not anything wrong with the job or the working conditions, something wrong with you. During the Industrial Revolution all factory workers weren’t required to smile constantly or risk being stamped as some kind of deviant from corporate values. Now one is expected not just to carry out boring, repetitive, menial work for a pittance but be relentlessly cheery about it – cause if you’re not, the problem is within your own psyche, and it’s nothing to do with a low wage or taking abuse from angry customers. It’s because you’re choosing to be negative, and people who choose to be negative need to be fixed.
My trainer said, with an air of faint bewilderment, that she couldn’t understand how people who didn’t like their jobs didn’t just get a new job. Love it or leave it! “Why would you want to work somewhere you don’t feel 100 percent fulfilled?”
Like I said, she seemed really nice. But she didn’t seem to get how “Oh, just pack it in and get a new job!” isn’t an option at the level me and my colleagues are at. If we pack it in it we won’t graduate to an air-conditioned office and four or five times the salary we are on now – in other words, her job. We’d be shelf-stacking at Tescos, and no doubt still getting harangued for not “living in the moment” and “injecting fun and playfulness into work.”
See this fucking class divide? It sneaks in all over the place. Now we’re even sposed to kid on we’re blissful in our minimum-wage shite jobs so the people who provide them can feel better about themselves. Alienation? Get rid of that lingering scent quick with Corporate Febreze.
