The Scorpion, the Frog, and Corporate America

Once upon a time, there was a frog sitting by a riverbank. A scorpion happens along and decides he wants to cross the river. But the scorpion cannot swim. So, he asks the frog for a ride on his back across the river.

"Are you crazy?" the frog replies. "You are a scorpion. You will sting me."

"Sting you?" the scorpion says. "If I were to sting you, we would both drown. There is no logic in that."

The frog thinks about it and tells the scorpion to hop on his back. They get halfway across the river when the scorpion stings him. They are both drowning now, and the frog asks the scorpion why he did such an irrational thing.

"It's my nature," the scorpion says.

This is an old story. I have used it myself in a different context. I have heard it applied to governments, lovers, false friends, etc. The point of the story is obvious. Some people are going to do what is irrational regardless of the irrationality of it or the consequences. It is their nature to be this way.

I have come to a stunning realization that corporations are exactly like the scorpion in this fable. The frog represents the workers in those corporations. I am a free market capitalist type of guy, but I am also a working man. I can tell you that every company I have known has always been about fucking over the worker. This doesn't make economic sense since workers are the ones who actually produce the goods and services that customers buy. But companies put the screws to employees because it is their nature. The result is a workforce in a permanent state of low morale and looking for better opportunities.

Workers hate the companies they work for. I remember talking with a lady at Walmart who said that Walmart was a great place to work when Sam Walton was alive. "Now, they just look to fuck you," she said. I was a bit astounded to hear an older lady like that use the F-word.

The fucking is not limited to the wage earners at the bottom but runs up the entire chain. Salaried workers get fucked as hard if not harder than the wage earners. Because of the pay structure, salaried workers often find themselves doing wage earner work with no additional pay. Of course, with all of this extra work getting done for free, you would expect that the company would recognize the loyalty and sacrifice. Nope. They simply sting your ass like the scorpions they are. It is their nature.

Companies are mystified that workers have no company loyalty, but they should not be so confused over the cause. Company loyalty disappeared because companies killed it. When you fuck over your workforce, they fuck you back.

Smart companies and managers know that putting the screws to the workers is not a winning strategy over the long term. This is why that lady at Walmart spoke so well of Sam Walton. There was a time when she was a dedicated worker. This was because Sam Walton was a decent and honest person who realized the value of his workforce. Even after his death, this woman appreciated the man. It is without a doubt that she worked harder and did more for the company when Walton was still around than she does now.

The reason companies fuck over workers is because they prefer the short term over the long term. A dedicated skilled workforce is expunged in favor of low wage earners who don't give a fuck. It is like buying rotten cabbage because it is cheaper. But paying for garbage is never a wise decision. Price is what you pay, and value is what you get. If you only look at the price side of that formula, you end up paying more for less value.

For the workers, a common answer is to organize a union and strike for better conditions. Basically, this is a frog deciding to become a scorpion. The result is that both still drown. There is a better answer.

The real answer is to become a turtle. A turtle has a shell which makes it harder to get stung. To get a shell, you learn to never ever trust the word of any company or boss. They are all liars looking for the opportunity to fuck you. This is their nature. By always expecting to get fucked, you are always looking for a better opportunity. When you have a job or land a job, the rule is simple. ALWAYS BE LOOKING or what I call the ABL rule. It sucks to always be out applying for other jobs, interviewing, or whatnot. It also sucks to carry a shell around all the time. But this is what is required when you live in a world of scorpions. When you have this shell and you feel the tap on the back of your shell as the scorpion tries to sting you, you quietly submerge leaving the scorpion to drown. The worst thing that can happen to you is that you might get offered a better job. If this happens, do not hesitate to make the move. Fuck company loyalty. They are not going to hesitate to fuck you.

The other aspect is a personal one. Somewhere along the line, you may be lulled into thinking of your boss as a friend. He or she isn't. Your boss may be getting fucked as bad or worse than the people he or she has working for them. But in the choice between you and the boss, the boss is going to fuck you. The boss is not your friend. The boss can never be your friend. You can only be friends with your equals. You cannot be friends with your superiors. Do a good job, but don't ever expect the boss not to fuck you. Bosses are the scorpion's sting.

The final aspect is a financial one. You should always save a cushion for job changes or even have other sources of income. This cushions the transition from one job to another, and these transitions are a permanent part of your working life. Get used to change because change will always be there.

My libertarian friends will take me to task for this viewpoint because they believe that markets make companies humane and smart. This isn't true. It is understandable when a company lays off employees because of economic downturn. It is understandable when government policies make them limit overtime. These decisions are all driven by the profit motive. It is when companies do unprofitable things that the mind boggles. This would be training a crew of people at considerable expense with the full knowledge that they will be fired in just a few weeks making a sunk cost a permanent cost. Another example would be cutting full time people to part time hours in order to hire more part time people. The result is massive turnover and lowered productivity. I can go on and on with examples, or you can read Dilbert each day. Scott Adams never lacks for material for that strip.

I am convinced that companies are profitable not by design but by accident in much the same way that we all have an opposable thumb. We didn't get this thumb by choice. It is that those who had a crooked thumb survived better than those who didn't. Companies are the same way. Companies don't survive and prosper because they are smart. They survive and prosper because they are lucky. There is simply too much stupidity in companies to not come to this conclusion. The fact that less than 1% of companies survive past the century mark is one indication of this. Another is the fact that the average lifespan of a company is just 30 years.

Most people would like to find a company they could spend a career at, but this state of affairs has never existed. People like to evoke the 1950s as one of those times when you could find a company like this. What people fail to understand is this era was only ten years long. The Japanese had a similar traditional expectation. Then, they found out different.

Corporations are simply huge chaos machines slinging shit at a wall to see what sticks. There is no plan or method to this madness. The best companies are simply the ones lucky enough to find a repeatable formula. This would be Coke and McDonald's and branded apparel like Levi's. Beyond this, the nature of a company is just like the scorpion. It blindly acts. There is no rationality. There is only action and response. The result is that these companies destroy themselves. The history of business is replete with this self-destruction. Why do companies destroy themselves? It is their nature.

Posted in: