Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Corporate Classism

Before I begin, let me preface this post by saying that I have been going through corporate documentation hell trying to prevent myself from being fired.

To wit, the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. To wit, the left hand doesn't know that it has a right hand and the right hand doesn't know that it has a left hand. Certain people are ambidextrious and certain people are only right handed. Certain people are left handed and could be right handed but choose not to be.

And the whole crux of this is to say that the more complicated and convoluted you make a system, the harder it is to navigate through treacherous waters.

It's quite fortunate that I am educated and white at times like this. If I was neither educated, nor white, nor likely male--it is quite likely that I would have found myself summarily fired. I would not have known to advocate for myself. I would not have known about options. I would not have known how to network.

The more complex this world becomes, the more and more disenfranchised the poor and ignorant become. Technology is designed for people who have had the luxury to be educated and thus capable of understanding it. Customers called in all the time regarding rudimentary questions that a life of relatively middle-class prosperity could have remedied.

Yet, the big wigs concerned with profit-share, stock portfolios, and making money care little about this. They just want to make money. Nevermind if the technology is far too complicated for the ignorant and ill-educated. Nevermind if humanity is not, as yet, hard-wired to deal with it. Nevermind all of this--it's all about making profit.

This is when the small government side of me rears its ugly head. It takes a resourceful, wily person to navigate through an increasingly complex, convoluted corporate system.

Let me ask one question of you, my dear readership:

However, as we continue to complicate and compartmentalize our world, are we really making things easier for ourselves?

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