Working for The Man 3 comments

By Andy Whitman

I work for The Man; more specifically one of the fabled Banks Too Big to Fail.

You may remember The Man. The Man is a figurative term that refers to those social and economic customs that prevent people from being treated as human beings in the workforce. The deification of profits, structures, and policies occurs at the expense of human identity, creativity, and unique talent.

Hence the understandable antagonism and ambivalence. Nobody wants to work for The Man. But everybody wants a paycheck.

I am reminded of the term because of the recent activity of the Occupy Wall Street protesters. They have expanded their Manhattan base and now occupy many of the major cities in America. They camp out in parks, hoist their handmade signs, chant, and do what protesters have done for decades.

And the debate rages around them. They represent the 99%. No, they represent the 53%, the 47%, the 1%. They are the voice of disenfranchised America. No, they are the voice of a tiny minority of troublemakers. What are they even protesting against? They don’t have any recognizable goals.

Well, what part of “You’ve ruined our future and we’re mad as hell about it” is hard to grasp? What were the recognizable goals of the peasants who stormed the Bastille? Isn’t “F#$% the Man” a sufficient rallying cry?

I am old enough to remember the protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s. I was too young to take part, but I certainly grew up believing that the impetus behind the protests was right and just. These were my people, my generation of young idealists, and I identified with both the causes and the sometimes brave, sometimes foolhardy hippies who got maced and clubbed for their efforts.

And so I find myself in the most ambivalent of positions. I understand the outrage. Like everyone else, I’ve watched the good jobs disappear, the profits and the unemployment rates soar, the American Dream crumble and disintegrate in the wake of too few jobs and an imploding stock market.

I’ve watched my own career get shipped overseas and phased out because of drastic budgets cuts. Anyone can write. It’s just typing. And I know far too many bright, highly educated young people who have circled life in a seemingly endless holding pattern, living in their parents’ basements and whipping up lattes at Starbucks, greeting Wal-Mart shoppers and wondering what happened to the bright future they were promised. I get it.

But the truth is I work for The Man. I sympathize with the protesters, and then I go to work anyway. I work for The Man because I value shelter and food, and because I’d like to defer my latte-slinging days for as long as possible.

I work for the Man because the Man offered me a job when no one else would, because those profits have paved the way for job openings in an economy where every other corporation in my town is facing layoffs. I work for the Man because I want to support my family, and experience a modicum of challenge and satisfaction.

And so I ask myself what a Christian witness looks like in this situation. In my case, the human face of The Man is in fact the face of a woman. My manager is a young mom with two little kids. She’s good at her work and she’s a good human being; fair, humane, and compassionate. I like her.

I get paid to write, and I work for a company that seems committed to the notion that it might involve more than typing. The work itself is meaningful and worthwhile; designing the content and flow of information on websites, translating the intricacies and gotchas of financial information into language that is understandable and intuitive for harried people who simply want to pay their bills and ensure that their checking and savings accounts stay in the black.

And yet the corporation itself has undoubtedly participated in unethical practices. What’s a brother to do?

I know people—far too few, unfortunately—who have managed to spend their entire careers working for companies that maintain the highest ethical standards. The rest of us muddle on under the knowledge that our best efforts are tainted, that the good we try to do is hopelessly tinged with selfishness, pride, and greed.

And those are simply our personal failures, divorced from the broader implications of the companies that employ our services.

In the meantime, the Man continues to elevate profits over people, to run roughshod over (un)common compassion and human decency. It is a struggle to maintain one’s soul in such an environment. Souls don’t contribute to the bottom line, and they have a tendency to get in the way of the purely mercenary practices that enhance profitability.

It is somewhat ironic, then, to be able to celebrate the presence of souls from deep in the heart of darkness, the tiny little acts of kindness that chip away, ever so slightly, at the monolithic bastion of evil that the Occupy Wall Streeters would like to imagine.

When my sister died, my co-workers called me at home, and set up a cancer research fund in her memory. My manager, she of the harried life and the deadlines, assured me that work was not all that important, and that I should take some time off. Her manager called to express his condolences. And co-workers from all over the country, many of whom I’ve never met, sent me cards and email messages expressing their support and sympathy.

This too is the Man. Go figure. Or better yet, don’t. You won’t find that on a spreadsheet.