I don't trust girlboss companies who use intimate gal pal language with their workers any more than I trusted techbro companies who installed ping pong tables for their workers. absent of actual worker protections, informality is just an accelerant for work-life boundary erosion

companies with casual cultures get coded as good/cool in opposition to the stuffy, formal white collar workplaces of yore, but that opposition is solely aesthetic. if your company is actually good/cool, it'll put worker benefits, a union or a cooperative model where its mouth is

I resent how today's white collar companies invoke personal concepts like 'passion' and 'values' to obfuscate the true transactional nature of work, because they know they gain advantage in the transaction if they convince workers to not see it as transactional at all

this, companies want to 'skip the bottom of maslow's pyramid.' because it's cheaper to suck out all your labor and puff up your spirit with self-actualization scented febreze than take a profit cut for your basic physical, mental and material wellbeing https://twitter.com/lolsob/status/1204569511321571329

my issue isn't companies having vibes. my issue is companies trying to pay you in vibes instead of proper pay and working conditions

my issue isn't companies having values, either. my issue is companies demanding you embody their values instead of embodying your actual body, which needs rest and space and an apartment and a dentist. my issue is companies who have values for everything except workers' rights.

I definitely feel like care workers and domestic workers (disproportionately black women and other racialized women) have been on the front lines of this issue the longest. thinking of this snippet from alice childress' 1956 novel 'like one of the family' https://twitter.com/AElfswithe/status/1204986557800669184