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Forced Fun at Work Makes Puppets of Employees
A director at a French tech company recently won a lawsuit over being fired for not wanting to attend alcohol-fueled meetings and live their “fun and professionalism” values. Viva la France!
Before there were crazed culture codes that spelled out the values of the cult you joined — ‘it’s not just a job, it’s your destiny’ — there were always some unwritten rules at these software joints.
At one company I was associated with, even though they sold an incredibly schlocky business app, the software jocks acted as though they were working at Apple during the early years or had some other delusional belief about what they were doing. The Dunning-Kruger was strong there.
When I first arrived, I was given an informal tour by my marketing manager who sprinted through the halls engaging in short meaningless pep talks with whoever she ran into. I was to learn later that she felt employees should be embracing the company brand — answering phone calls and interacting with others in a way that showed they were excited about where they worked.
My takeaway: employees were used as stage props to be manipulated by management.
As I recall, we had an off-the-wall off-site meeting that involved our marketing group play acting in front of everyone to make some point about our corporate…
