The Belly of the Beast





Although I read that corporations are improving...that companies like Google and Patagonia actually treat their employees as valuable, that unfortunately, has not been my experience.  My experience has been the corporation that affords minimal holidays and five days off a year, for which you have to beg and are treated like a slacker for taking.  Yet, without exception, the policy manual states that taking time off is encouraged for a healthy work/life balance.

The company expects you to respond to text messages 24/7 without overtime pay.  Yet it penalizes you for clocking in five minutes late.  The companies I have worked for all reserve the right to randomly drug test and will promptly fire you if you took a hit from the joint someone passed you after doing a couple shots of tequila at a wedding three weeks prior.

Each one has offered expensive, lousy health insurance, contributing their federally mandated portion and not a penny more.

The CEOs typically have jets, yachts, two or three ostentatious homes and expensive cars and the worker bees typically struggle to make ends meet, often working a second job.  Granted, those at the top have worked to get where they are.  Yet those at the bottom have often given every bit as much of their lives, only to get where they are.  It is highly unusual for an employee to have a vested interest in the outcome and share in the profits he/she has helped earn, rendering their life experience there pretty much meaningless.  Some thankfully are able to find personal satisfaction and use that as a self-reward. But that's really the exception, not the rule.

Those at the top play games of intrigue and sabotage to oust the other so that they can move in and grab the power, along with its perqs.  Trust is an empty concept and often a sign of naivete or weakness.  Egalitarianism is a criticism in the performance appraisal of a manager.

And so I have the skeleton of a play, poking fun at this horrible situation.  It is a personal coping mechanism to abstract and satirize ridiculous behavior.  It is far more pleasant to laugh than cry.  Watch for this on Broadway!