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Part of the “our company is family” is precisely to lure you into spending more time at work than home. Also, reducing the meaning of family to “people I care about” is bizarrely reductive, and again, a straight path to exploitation. All of the nopes. https://twitter.com/tom_peters/status/1285928266931613698
And you’ll see how one-sided this conception of “our company is a family” as soon as hard times hit. Family is based to a large extent on unconditional love and support. The entire employment setup is one of overt conditionality, and “business changed” circumstances.
The primary reason businesses are so eager to adopt the family language is because “company”, as a word and an idea, has been so tarnished by reality that it’s easier to reach for a fantasy than to rehabilitate. It’s a rebranding of the same old shit!
This idea that unless the company conceives of itself as a family, it can’t do good, it can’t care, it can’t treat people right is just bunk. It’s like thinking morality is conditional on a theistic religion. Some companies actually accept they’re not the center of the universe!
The best companies realize that they should not battle people's actual families for supremacy. They should accept their supporting role. Be proud of simply being a good place to work. Stop looking enviously at the love and devotion sane people place with their real families.
When companies pretend to be "family", it's also a key undermining tactic of legitimate solidarity amongst workers. While you might feel family-like bonds with your coworkers, doing so with a capitalist corporation – owners and managers – is just delusional.
Again, I say that as someone owning and managing part of a capitalist corporation! And as someone who've felt family-like bonds with coworkers previously. But that's exactly why I feel the need to curb our ambitions of devotion!
Stop looking to work to fulfill every human emotional need! The reason you're so desperate to cast the company as a family is probably because you've been spending far too much time there! Get away from the office, diversify your life, and let work be just one part.
