Work Daze

If you’d like to know who I’m supporting for President, you certainly won’t
find out by walking into my cubical. I’ve got my walls plastered with signs
for Hillary, Obama, and John McCain. I don’t have a Huckabee banner, because
I am wearing an “I Like Mike” T-shirt – at least, I wear it on Mondays. On
Tuesdays I wear my “Hats off for Hillary” golf cap. On Wednesdays, it’s my
“Obama’s Army” lapel pin, and on Thursdays, rain or shine, I come to work
wearing my “Another Macintosh for McCain” raincoat. I’ll be wearing my
“Nader is Greater” sweatshirt on Fridays, once I pull it out of the
mothballs. That leaves the weekends for the candidate of the Vegetarian
Party, which has yet to hold its first caucus, but will certainly swing into
action once we enter broccoli season.

As you may grasp, in the important matter of choosing a Presidential
candidate, I am hedging my bets.

It’s probably the same for you, too. While company management may not have a
political policy on the books, you certainly know better than to get on the
wrong side of your bosses when it comes to any important matter, like who
will win this year’s American Idol. The stakes are even higher when it comes
to a hot-campaign button issue, like a Presidential election. Hillary, Barak
and John may not ruin the country in one term, but disagreeing with
management on the issue could result in your election to the unemployment
office. And you can forget about asking for a recount. The only hanging chad
in this election will be you.

What makes the problem even more difficult is the fact that management
rarely publishes the company line on political issues. According to a new
survey from the American Management Association, ninety-two percent of all
workers surveyed insist that “no one from their company – either management
or labor – has recommended voting for a particular candidate because it
would benefit the organization.”

This is unfair. How can we brown-nosing toadies express our deeply felt,
personal political opinions if no one tells us what they are.

Forty percent of survey respondents responded that they are “comfortable
talking politics with their supervisors.” No doubt! I’m entirely comfortable
asking my boss who I should vote for. And I’m sure my boss feels the same.
After all, she tells me how I should work, think, dress, eat, invest, wed,
and sleep, as well as providing valuable counsel on how to raise my
children, take my vacations, or choose an aroma therapist for my Schnauzer.
In fact, I am so accustomed to following orders, if my boss didn’t tell me
which candidate to choose, you’d definitely find me in the voting booth,
staring dumbly at the ballet and muttering, “I don’t know. I just don’t
know.”

Fortunately, there are a few firms that care enough about the welfare of
their hapless employees to specify an official corporate candidate.
According to the AMA study, a measly 7 percent recommended voting for a
particular candidate. Now, that’s the kind of company you want to work for –
they understand that employees don’t want to think for themselves. Heck,
most of us don’t want to think at all.

Also, according to the survey, we learn that most companies are not only
failing in their duty to instruct their employees on how to vote, more than
three quarters of the senior executives surveyed report that their company
does not contribute to a particular party.

This lack of interest in buying politicians is definitely a sign of trouble.
If your company does not own or even lease a few quality congressmen and
senators, how are they going to protect you and your job when more
civic-minded competitors start beating you over the head with their
checkbooks? If your management still clings to some old fashioned idea about
“ethics,” I suggest you form your own PAC, or political action committee.
With just modicum of arm bending and, if necessary, leg breaking, you can
certainly wring a few thousand dollars out of your coworkers to use for
bribery and influence peddling. I believe it’s even deductible!

Remember – as a citizen, it’s your job to support our political system.
Remember also – it’s our political system that supports your job. So, follow
your conscience. And if you checked your conscience at the office door when
you took your current job, do what I am going to do. Vote Vegetarian!