CAVEAT LECTOR; or, TRIGGER WARNING
THIS INSTALLMENT FEATURES A FAMOUS POEM THAT FEATURES A FAMOUS CUSS WORD. TWICE!
PROCEED ACCORDINGLY.
I struggle to express how reluctant I am to start with a trigger warning, which I find potentially infantilizing and insulting to my audience. Still, since my audience is wide and general, I offer it in the spirit of broad acceptance. As an English professor, though, I simply will not censor a poem.Build me a cabin in Utah
Marry me a wife, catch rainbow trout
Have a bunch of kids who call me “Pa”
That must be what it’s all about
Bob Dylan
Act 1: Welcome to the family!
We are all just one big family here! You are now part of a wonderful community, but more importantly, you are part of our family. This is a great place to work because we consider ourselves a family. Sure, you work here, but it is more like being in a family than it is like being at a job. It’s the family atmosphere here really that sets us apart.
Act 3: You’re such a disappointment to the family.
You let me down, but what’s worse is that you let down our family. If you had a better attitude, you would appreciate how we are all a family. Even though we are a big happy family, you just don’t seem to want to fit in. I know we always say we are a family, but you just are not family material. I love you like you are my own family, but we are going to have to have some cuts and layoffs.
We’re a family. That’s how a lot of workplaces present themselves. They are families, not to be confused with employers. This is supposed to suggest that the workplace is a source of support and love, perhaps even unconditional love. Maybe it’s true or maybe not in any given workplace. If your employment situation is really like a big happy family, consider yourself lucky. Do a little dance. Celebrate!
🎵 “We are fam-i-lee!” 🎶
In the meantime, let’s contemplate the implications of familial metaphors as they play out in most workplaces.
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
Philip Larkin
While there is an array of family types (nuclear families, extended families, single-parent families, foster families, adopted families, childless families, blended families, families by choice, grandparent families, stepfamilies, polygamist families, the Manson family, and even mafioso families) there is one basic structure within those variations. With the exception of childless partners, every family consists of those who identify as parents and those who identify as children. We will leave your pets and houseplants out of this.
Notably, the status of being a child in the family is not predicated on age or even on whether that child has a family of his or her own. Furthermore, most families operate as a benign autocracy that can extend well into the adulthood of the children. If you doubt me, whatever your age, imagine telling your mother that you are taking up free fall skydiving, are planning to get a neck tattoo, or intend to chew ice on a regular basis.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Philip Larkin
So, in a workplace family, how does this all unfold? Simple. Someone has to be the parents, and someone has to be the children. Once you have parsed this division of labor, it is pretty easy to suss out where it leads.
Just as parents tend to learn parenting from their parents, bosses tend to learn bossing from their bosses. This all sounds well and good until you consider this basic truth about photocopy machines: copies of copies deteriorate, growing less sharp with each iteration, a phenomenon known as “generation loss.” Copies of copies of copies, and so forth, are nearly unreadable. A few more generations, and they are unrecognizable. I think this same thing happens with both parenting and bossing. When we copy our predecessors, we forget that we are generations removed from the original, that they copied copies that were copied, and now you copy them and so on — generation loss.
The best thing to do is start over. Maybe use your predecessors as a rough template but then create a new model for how to be. Good parents do that, and so do good bosses.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
Philip Larkin
There is another obvious matter to address. Is your workplace family primarily functional or dysfunctional? I have heard it claimed that all families are dysfunctional, but I do not believe that. Too often we assume every setback, problem, and disaster is necessarily the result of dysfunction, but that is not a given. Dysfunction is a systemic failure, a failure to perform as a whole. Even when families face crises, these disasters are not necessarily the consequence of a systemic failure. Systemic failures — dysfunction — manifest most glaringly not in the big stuff but in the day to day, the little stuff. If the little stuff is needlessly rough, you’ve likely got dysfunction. If the little stuff is typically smooth, you probably don’t. Oh, and both function and dysfunction generally flow downward, at least at the outset. Eventually they develop into a feedback loop.
So, what sort of a family is your workplace? On the one extreme, is it the harmonious family of Bil, Thelma, Jeffy, and the rest of the Family Circus from the old funny papers, a world so precious and sweet that it has been known to promote tooth decay? Or is it the idyllic family of one of those prescription drug commercials in which Mom, Dad, the kids, and the dog all seem to be violently happy, hopelessly self-satisfied, and unreasonably delighted with one another, sharing meaningful smiles while they work on their hobbies together despite the fact that dad is suffering from some sort of not-obvious skin disorder? Ask your doctor.
Or, is your workplace family of an entirely different ilk? There are many models to choose from. Is it the family Philip Larkin describes in his poem “This Be the Verse,” the family that spans generations to mess you up, assuring that the ocean of misery “deepens like a coastal shelf?” Or is it the Royal Tenenbaums, a family that projects outward success but in which all the twists of each member’s psychology are further knotted up by the part-time patriarch’s manipulations. I have worked there.
Or, maybe, it reflects the familial dynamics of Succession in which Pop is cartoonishly overbearing, the mothers (biological and step) are near-cyphers or his useful idiots, and each child manifests a different worst aspect of the father with none of his resolve.
Perhaps your workplace emulates King Lear, in which the doddering patriarch falls prey to the sycophantic manipulations of his devious older daughters and subsequently disowns the youngest, the only one who truly loves him enough to be honest with him. Many needless deaths ensue. Is this what your workplace is like? I have definitely worked in this one.
Then again, why should the fathers have all the fun? There is Ozark, with its matriarch so ruthless she is driven to fratricide, Hamlet’s mother who is both doting and duplicitous, and Estelle Costanza — George’s mother — a woman whose voice alone is enough to drive any child to the very depths of neurotic narcissism that her son exhibits.
And what the heck is going on with Oedipus Rex, in which a man unwittingly marries his own mother, thus engendering children-siblings for him and children-grandchildren for her? I have worked in that one too, by the way.
Chances are, your workplace, good or bad, is not as extreme as any of these, but then where does it fall between the antipodes of the Family Circus and the Family Oedipus?
As you contemplate your answer, consider these wise words from psychologist Adam Grant, an example of what I call learning from the negative paradigm.
A cardinal rule of responsibility is to shield others from the suffering you endured. Good parents refuse to dump their childhood baggage on their kids. Good leaders and coaches refuse to perpetuate abusive patterns. You can choose to do right in the ways you've been wronged.
So, the workplace can be a family. One way or the other, yes indeedy. If that is how you see your workplace, think carefully now before proceeding. What sort of a family is it, exactly? Welcome to the family.
Workplace families can take a variety of forms, but they must be functional and supportive, like the best of families.
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