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Transcript:
There’s a large difference between being loyal and being trapped. I hear that loyalty word a lot bantered around today. Being loyal requires that your work situation be reciprocal, as I was just saying. It has to benefit both sides equally or at least as equally as possible. And that typically goes far, far beyond when “I do the work. They pay me the money.” That is like the lowest level of equality in any position. We all tend to forget ourselves that that company has something — we have something the company needs from us. Otherwise, they wouldn’t hire us. Right? They’re not paying us for nothing. We have a skill they need. They need to see that and you need to see that. That’s when you get in a situation where you’re working with someone, rather than working for someone. Unfortunately, the “working for someone” has come out of the history of work. That’s how we always register it. I wrote a column the other day — someone wrote about — “such and such GIVES you a job.” I said, “Now they don’t! You earn that job. If you didn’t do something to earn that job, they wouldn’t be hiring you.” We need to abolish that term out of dialogue entirely. Because what it immediately points up is the power dynamic — the distorted power dynamic that exists int hat work relationship. It’s never going to be equa, unless you’re working as a partner in a business you partially own, but you want to get that power ratio as close as possible as you possibly can. Your boss needs to understand that you’re bringing something useful to them and they are paying you for that usefulness. And if you forget that, you are precipitating — uh — participating in your own demise. You are punishing yourself. Don’t do that!
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