Since the dawn of my early teenhood, I have heard the lore of working for corporate America. “Corporate America will suck the life out of you, they’re evil, there’s nothing good that comes out of working for a big company.”
We’ve got entire forms of media based on the apparent life-sucking nature of the corporate world. But I’m not certain they’re telling the whole truth.
Take my favorite game, Stardew Valley, a game about your character being drained from working at the corporate giant Joja, who leaves to inherit their grandpa’s farm in the valley.
If I learned anything from Stardew Valley, it’s that I might enjoy a corporate job rather than being a lonesome farmer. Your backbreaking work starts at 6 a.m. where for at least the first couple weeks of the season you are stuck individually watering every plant you have on your farm until you risk your life in the mines to either build sprinklers or upgrade your watering can.
Even though farmers in real life are not risking their lives battling creatures in multi-level mines, farmers face different challenges. Costs of goods and rising costs related to gear and taxes can often provide an unstable work environment for farmers. Along with uncontrollable factors like Mother Nature.
All this to say, corporate jobs are generally stable work environments. You clock in at 9 a.m. and clock out at 5 p.m., with an unpaid 30-minute break. However, not working for corporate America can leave you with unstable schedules, getting in early and getting out late.
Working corporate for the benefits like paid time off, insurance and 401K can be really appealing for the average American, especially when you consider the rising costs of healthcare.
However, these benefits do not counter the true nature of corporate America. Unlike being a farmer, those long hours that you worked does not turn into something tangible that you can call yours. You are creating work, spending the best years of your life, being a number in a massive corporate giant and when you clock out at 5 p.m., nothing can be considered truly yours. It was for the company.
Everything you do is “in the company’s best interest” rather than working for a company that cares about you as a person. That is something that small businesses generally don’t have. The general feel of the small businesses I’ve worked for is that they’d do everything they can before laying you off rather than saying “we’re restructuring” with no prior notice.
Singer-songwriter Dolly Parton didn’t stutter when she said, “They let you dream just to watch ‘em shatter.” There are countless stories of people spending their entire lives working somewhere just to get laid off during a budget cut during the holiday season.
This is why I say that corporate is evil but not bad. They can screw you over in the worst ways possible but at the end of the day when you need better insurance, higher pay, a retirement plan, a consistent schedule or most other benefits that only corporate level companies can afford, it does make them a more beneficial and stable workplace.
I would love to see a day when small businesses are able to compete with the benefits offered by larger companies but until that happens, I understand why people are continuing to choose the corporate life.
