An Automated Deference To Authority
Respect is earned, not conferred by the company manual nor by the archaic management practices of the past.
I’ve spoken before about how communication between individuals in a company is often subject to many rules and regulations laid out in the employee manuals.
I’m thinking these were originally intended to strengthen the class divide of the dim and distant past, putting into writing the unwritten rule of not criticising your supposed betters, keeping in your line, and pretty much staying put in your rightful place.
A bit like, speak only when you’re spoken to and standing when a teacher enters the classroom — buried deep in our collective cultural capital¹.
Over time, as the workplace evolved, as managers became more of a chino wearing squeaky shoe phenomena than one born of a middle class public school background with the correct tie, these written rules had to be strengthened to protect the less entitled automatons as they couldn’t quite carry off the air of authority so easily that their ancestors managed.
So I’m generalising a little, as usual, but suffice it to say that today’s management aren’t quite the select bunch they once were and have necessarily become something of a protected corporate species.
