10 Lies Corporates Sell us to Break Normal Rules of Behaviour and Evade Punishment

Part 3 in a 3-part series on capitalism and corporate behaviour

In the first article in this series, I argue that it’s a big mistake to think of business as a force for good. In the second, I point to a strange irony — that we expect far more from ordinary people than we do from corporations. (The links to both are in the footer.)

In this, the final article in the series, I turn the spotlight on some of the many lies, big and small, that companies sell us to justify their every action, and convince us that the normal rules of behaviour don’t apply to them.

Here then, without further ado, are 10 of the most brazen lies that companies tell us every day to get away with murder.

1. It’s not personal I remember watching Donald Trump’s reality show, The Apprentice, back whenever it was on (just kidding, it started in 2004 and ran for 10 seasons), and being mildly fascinated that we even belonged to the same species. Make no mistake, back then he was a smart guy in reasonable possession of his faculties. The sort you could absolutely learn a lot from about business. But the thing he did that hurt my feelings so much that I was moved to try and speak on behalf of everyone who’s ever worked a day in their lives was when he delivered his three most infamous one-liners of the show: “It’s nothing personal.” “It’s just business.” And “you’re fired”. Of the three, I think it’s the “not personal” bit that got to me the most. Firing a person is by definition personal to them. They are getting fired for something they did or didn’t do. To know that it wasn’t (even) personal, that it mattered so little that insult should at this point ideally be added to personal injury — that must have an immensely demoralising effect. Nobody says “it’s not personal” anymore. It’s just too tone-deaf and cruel. But you can bet your last dollar it’s the mental ambience all corporate sharks move in.
2. They’re bigger than you and will beat you every time But what it must feel like to utter those lines! I imagine Donno getting off on the sheer power coursing through those powerful veins feeding that powerful shambling physique. Really, who behaves like that? With the clear and unambiguous message that they have absolute, unopposable power over you and your destiny? Maybe this guy. And all CEOs. And corporations. Because corporations and their executives are deeply conscious of being powerful entities and individuals whose superior bargaining power entitles them to act with impunity, and to hire, fire and unilaterally set conditions of employment.
3. They’re terribly fragile and entitled to your protection Some in The Apprentice — bravely or stupidly —tried to give as good as they got, but to even think that way as a mere apprentice you must be crazy. Here’s the code of behaviour in such situations: Your self-respect and reputation in tatters, you have to simply dust yourself off and move on, or you’re being petty and beating up on poor old Donny.
4. Besides which you did a shitty job Oh, this is gonna hurt you more than them. Being subjected to a public firing is such an outrageous trick of confidence that you are invited, by implication, to believe you must have been spectacularly bad in every sense of the word to deserve it. You were so bad at business and at assimilating what this demon sage of a businessman tried and failed to teach you (however briefly), that it’s truly no reflection on his ability to teach, or any ordinary human’s ability to learn. That’s on you, my friend. Your performance was so shameful that you can rightfully be shamed before all the world. So crap that to shout unfair would be bang out of order. You’d be biting the hand that feeds you, and that would be the only really unfair thing here. For shame.
5. And you’re not worth it. To be told, in summary, that it’s not even personal, that you are the aggressor and your former employer is the aggrieved party, and that you have no agency or power over your own life, is ultimately deeply embarrassing to your dignity as a human being. As I’ve said before, people’s experience is deeply linked to their personal identity, and while many will take a mortal insult as a personal challenge, many others may never recover from it.
6. It’s not BS, it’s marketing I’m one of those naïfs you sometimes see hanging on by the skin of their teeth in the shark tank of corporate life. Part glowering, part cowering*, I am tolerated and tolerate being in an office purely by necessity. Swimming among apex predators far more ferocious than I can ever dream of being. Right now, I’m waiting for the fallout after telling the head of marketing “we really need to be able to back up our claims, or it is just so much bullshit”, to which she answered much like Trump would — “it’s not bullshit, it’s marketing!” I guess that means it’s conversation over and both of us believe we’re right — she by corporate might, and I by divine right of the sacrosanct meaning of words. Thank God for creative tension, or there’d be no jobs for artists.
7. You’ve got to be a little manipulative No you don’t. You’ve got to be respectful to people or they’ll hate you when they find out they’ve been had, and feel violated and stupid for being tricked into doing something they’d never do of their own free will. What the hell am I talking about now? Well, have you ever taken a trial Amazon Prime or LinkedIn Premium membership and set yourself a reminder to cancel it before they start charging? Psych! You have just encountered the dark arts of Amazon and Microsoft’s clever user experience (UX) designers, who make it so easy for you to create an account, but so hard to close it. Perfectly legal, except not really entirely always.
8. It’s not theft, it’s UX So now you’re embroiled in an almighty struggle with the satanic designs of a whole team of maze design maestros. One of two things can happen: either you’re really clever yourself or really stubborn, and you finally penetrate the bureaucracy after much trying and failing — or just as often, you accidentally find yourself agreeing to full membership. Either way, you lose precious minutes of your life running down an evil stupid corporate rabbit warren (and take hours off your life expectancy in unnecessary stress). Suck it up, one man’s ill health is another’s good business practice.
9. Business must grow I don’t really have to spend much time on this, do I? If nothing is ever enough, and companies need to get ever bigger to chase more profits to feed their shareholders’ kids’ trust funds and to fend off competition from a position of dominance and to fight off inflationary costs, and if they can only achieve it by extracting or polluting ever more and by forever expanding their consumer base (by not opposing unbridled population growth on the basis of the conveniently liberal fiction of free will) then it’s quite simple — the earth will be a sick, creaky, toxic mess. Oh, it is already? Oh well, at least Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos will get us the hell outta here and into space. Thank God for ingenious industrialists with more money than countries. All of which is to say, now without the heavy irony, that if we put a lid on the preconditions of growth, the growth imperative need not be a given.
10. It’s a meritocracy Again, I’m too insulted by the flagrant nature of the everyday antitheses of this statement — nepotism, racial and elitist job reservation— to even want to argue the point, but I will, briefly. There ought to be laws against nepotism, but there just aren’t. Certain sectors of the media are vehement critics of clubby elitism, but it is probably more widespread than even racism and sexism. These are the silent exclusions at play in business today. My CEO — the hired-hand head of a family business, and therefor, I thought, an outsider like me— baited me into debating him on whether leaving a legacy is fair or not. Until then I hadn’t considered my own legacy versus the potentially monstrous one of a CEO earning on average 300 times the salary of the average worker, with holdings, businesses and homes in various countries. So I didn’t have any opinion on the issue, which was a victory in itself for him over one of his most recalcitrant, argumentative, apple cart-upsetting, underpaid and overworked petty managers (despite my own C-level title). Now I do. I have an opinion. And I urge you to develop one too.

They are legion

There are many other such fabrications perpetrated by the corporate classes that I could get into. For example: Progress must march on. Paying minimum wage is not indentured servitude. ‘Sponsoring’ foreigners with job contracts that don’t give them the option of freely changing jobs (quite legally) is not slavery. Your hard work is worth 300 times less than your boss’s. Forget the thing you love and study something that will get you a highly paid but ultimately insecure job. Capitalism and a free market should determine your worth. Medical care and education should be every bit as expensive as they are. Get a second and third job if you can’t get a proper career. Go bankrupt if you’re so hopeless.

But since I cannot think of all the examples, I’d be interested to hear your own perspective and examples, whether it’s something you’ve observed or experienced first-hand.

* Thanks to Lavender Bixby, whose fantastic words from another story echo through this phrase.

This is the third article in my series on capitalism and corporate behaviour. Read the first in the series, Some say stop beating up on late-stage capitalism, here, and the second, Why do we hold people and corporations to different standards of behaviour, here.