In my first service related job I saw a very common company attitude. The organisation puts up a front to its costumers and pretends to care about their opinions and lifestyles. In actuality, they do not care. Working behind these apparently benevolent scenes highlights the hollowness of the whole process. Management does not care about the public, it cares about money. Management also does not care about employees, it cares about their ability to increase profits.
My second service related job highlighted a more subtle and altogether more sinister approach. In this case, the company really did seem to care. Behind the altruistic scenes of high customer satisfaction was an effort to create an environment of high employee satisfaction. Profit really did not seem to be the overriding principle of the company. Of course, this cannot be true. On some level, almost entirely unseen, the cold and calculating basis of business lurked in the recesses of the building.
But this taint was never fully embodied by any employee. Granted, the overall manager was more concerned with income than any other person in the organisation but even this person seemed to value profit for its ability to keep his staff employed and to help provide an excellent consumer experience. Maybe someone beyond this manager is to blame. The image of an overseeing tyrant at the base of these companies is a comforting one as it places the blame on an individual person. We could blame this person for greed and theorise that they lost their way in a capitalist system designed to help create an equatable world. I fear that there is a much more harrowing alternative. Organisations like this one seem to have developed traits that are no longer represented by its staff and are completely beyond their control. There is no shrouded master controlling the cogs of the machine.
In actuality, the machine we created is controlling us and in the process, our humanity is being consumed.
-The English Student
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