In an article over on Art of Manliness, the subject that came up was, “Are the Suburbs Killing Your Manhood?” This is a worthy topic of discussion, after all, as the author points out, we rarely go on Mexico-binge-drinking-sexfests anymore! Back in college, we probably thought our lives would be much more manly than they are. We get stuck in a rut and we are satisfied just paying the bills and not making waves. The focus for many of us has shifted to families and mortgages, which, while nice are far from adventures climbing tall mountains on the weekends, or backpacking across Russia or digging for artifacts in Machu Pichu.

When was the last time you attempted to break out of sedate and predictable lifestyle that you cling to as desperately as if you were clutching your seat cushion as a floatation device at the shark-infested site of an unscheduled water landing while you are on a routine business trip overseas? (And, if you do travel overseas for business, don’t you find you spend long hours working, and have almost no free time to enjoy the “exotic” overseas travel that your company tells you is a special perk? Not that I’m complaining!)

The fact is, you do what you feel is safe and secure, and you don’t try to break out of the box. If you are like me, you rarely venture out into the community anymore. (Hopefully, you have a more interesting life than I do!) Hell, I sit at home waiting for some opportunity to climb Mount Kilimanjaro to slap me in the face. It isn’t going to happen if you just sit around waiting for it, you have to actively plan and act on your desires. Even if we can’t all be Indiana Jones, Braveheart or Sean Connery, shouldn’t we aspire to live the more adventurous lives we imagined when we were kids? You need to do the things that motivate and inspire you, not just talk about them around the water cooler at the office with the boys.

The suburbs are tranquil and safe. Likewise, the corporation is intended to be a safe and boring place. Just like tract housing, everyone has a cubical, with managers having slightly larger ones. The color schemes are bland, and air conditioners pumps stale, reconditioned air at a constant 72 degrees through the building. All floors are nondescript and look alike. You are one step above flying in coach for eight hours, every day.

People are given titles that don’t cause rancor between co-workers. You might be an analyst or specialist or executive assistant, but we no longer use politically incorrect terms like janitor or secretary that clearly put one group over another. Nevertheless, the org chart clearly shows there is a hierarchy at the office, and you need to learn your place and mind your manners. Corporate workers are indoctrinated into the culture of not making waves. Be meek and mild, don’t question anything, don’t ask for a raise, just sit in your cubicle and answer the phone and stare at the computer.

Like the military, this is a culture that needs to assimilate thousands of employees, and it is important that you follow orders and don’t ask questions. If you don’t keep your hands inside the moving bus, you are likely to lose them. Another analogy that comes to mind is prison. You have a large population of individuals to manage, and they all need to get along. You only let them out of their cells (read: cubicles) for short breaks. Because of the boredom that sets in with the corporate mono-culture, you end up surfing the web and counting the minutes until the workday ends, like when you were a schoolboy stuck in study hall.

Companies have policies that are intended to give you enough authority to do your job, and no more. They pretend to support employee “empowerment” by taking employee surveys, and then they form employee committees who come up with ways to provide you with greater “empowerment” and “work life balance”. These are loaded terms, intended to make the employee think he is getting something, when all he is getting is usually more work.

For example, the corporation will empower you by giving you additional tasks during the week, such as reporting all the good things you do in a new online form that tracks your activities more closely. They will give you an employee recognition portal, that will let you nominate your friends for $2 cafeteria coupons. They will require you to take classes on how to be a better, more productive employee, and tell you that will empower you to “take charge” of your career. They will have you put your resume on-line, which of course involves more hours of “training”. The more they pile on you, the more weary you get. Hell, you might even think you have more of a say in what you do or how you do your job, when it’s all said and done.

When it comes to “work life balance”, companies are laughing all the way to the bank. Employees used to come to work, concentrate on certain tasks and then go home to spend time with their families. Now, by giving employees more flex time, they expect the employee to spend their days tethered to a computer and telephone, attending meetings and putting in their eight hours, plus lunch and a commute – and when they go home, they take a laptop and a smartphone so they can answer email and do work on their own time.

Instead of the company paying you overtime, if you are a staff employee you have agreed to a flat annual rate. This means, when you are out having dinner with friends, the office can email or call, and you will see it on your smartphone and pull out your laptop and do more work. Even if it isn’t that much, just the mere fact that the “expectation” is now for employees to be checking email for work on their own personal time is an invasion of their personal lives, and taking away time from their “real life”, not adding to it.

Sure, we’ll let you have flexible hours, as long as you work during that commute on the train, and check email when you should be watching “Who’s Smarter than a Fifth Grader” with your fifth grader. I don’t want to be sitting on a romantic beach along the Rivera making love to my laptop and my iPhone.

The term “wage slave” is accurate. There was a time when a family lived together, and worked the land together, and everything was family oriented. Think about the good times you have when you take a long vacation with your family, and have a hard time wanting to go back to the office. Our lives are being eroded away, for the benefit of the corporate “bottom line”. I don’t want to diminish the hardships of actual slaves, because our lives are not at all similar, except in how expectations are growing that we will give more of our 24-hour day to benefit our corporate masters. I know this is inflammatory, but companies shouldn’t be sneaky. If they want you to work longer hours, it should be a part of your employment contract. Hourly wage earners needed to form unions to protect their rights, as the work week extended to at least six days of long, hard shifts a mere hundred years ago. Regulations forced companies to reduced the work week, but now it is common for Americans to spend 50 plus hours a week to earn their 40-hour paycheck. This is not a boost in productivity, nor an improvement of work-life balance, this is the theft of an employees time without compensation.

If you thought it ended with corporations just expecting you to remain tethered to the office 24×7, you are mistaken. There is a new trend to get people to buy their own computers, and office chairs and smartphones to perform company work. So your pay is diluted as your work week grows, and now you have to buy a Dell and support it yourself? This makes sense when you work for yourself, but not when you are cube-farmed meat.

I worked for myself for two years, and as a consultant you work from a home office, you have to pay your own FICA and taxes and provide your own equipment, just like an electrical contractor or plumber. This makes sense if you also are rewarded with a higher hourly rate, and you get to work from home. I am not sure if this means that the ultimate result is (1) you continue to work as a staff employee with a fixed annual wage, work on-site, but have to work longer hours and use your paycheck to buy your own hardware. Or, (2) if it means companies are going to move to outsource labor, and you will be a widget that involves low overhead and is easy to terminate. The rationale they use to sell this idea to employees is: a mechanic has to buy their own tools, so should you. Clearly, the mechanic is an example of someone who can easily be replaced, like a widget.

Personally, I don’t have a very interesting life, so I’ve always expected that I would have to make myself available outside of business hours if necessary. I don’t mind that, as long as it isn’t too intrusive. But, if employees are expected to work longer hours, they should be paid for their time fairly. Corporations already cut your real wage annually, if they don’t adjust your base salary to rise with the cost of living. They’re just playing word games if they claim to give you a four percent raise, and all it does is cover inflation. Add to that dilution of your wage by unpaid overtime and new employee costs – and the corporate wage slave is losing ground.

People will argue that you need to make these concessions to keep a good job, in today’s competitive market. They will argue that businesses all compete, and they must keep the bottom line profitable. We would be stupid to think otherwise. The way we will do business will change with the times. At a minimum, we must recognize that our paychecks do not truly reflect what we thought they did, and we must hold Corporate America responsible for added stress, for killing our creativity and sapping our energy and for this invasion into our private lives in the name of increased productivity. This is certainly an assault on your manhood (if you are a man), and the corporate culture is an affront to human nature. But, while you may have less control,corporations may still provide insurance and better job security and other intangibles. There are other job options to consider, or things you can do to make the most of your corporate job, once you accept the things you cannot change. (I am an adjunct professor, teaching science classes every semester. This helps fulfill some of my needs that I know can’t be met in my corporate day job.)

You might say the halcyon days of corporate life are behind us. Good riddance! Change is inevitable and not always for the worst. We must recognize changes that are happening in the workplace and start looking out for ourselves. This means resisting the urge to assimilate in the corporate cube farms, and holding onto our dignity. Because we can’t have total control, that doesn’t mean we have no control at all. Corporate America is creating an environment of compliance and uniformity that seeks to dictate our behavior, and de-humanize us. This constant and complete control, this illusion of safety and permanence seeks to keep us moving along the path of least resistance.

We can fairly blame Corporate America for many things, and at a high level we probably need to address how these changes will affect our society. But, it is when we allow others to define us, and when we lower our expectations and settle into a rut is when we lose our manhood.

When we recognize this, rather than blaming others and succumbing to negative behavior, we can reclaim our manhood, as the linked article points out, not by changing jobs or leaving the suburbs, but by leaving our comfort zone and finding something outside of the staid and humdrum to pique our interest and add zest to our lives. We can be role models and leaders. We can be discerning individuals in a world that is sometimes out of our control, and we can make ethical decisions that are best for ourselves and our families based on our priorities and not lose that singular quality that makes us men.

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