Thoughts About Corporate Life (Part One)

Posted on September 18th, 2007 by Guy Lewis

The following is part one of a book I wrote between 2002 and 2003. I got to 70,000 words and then left work to start my own business up. So it never got finished. However there are some interesting thoughts here from five years ago that will be fun to share. Don’t take this too seriously.

Have you ever looked around at the people in a corporate environment, sitting at desks looking at computer screens, and counted the number of over fifties you can see? They usually contrast to the younger individuals with their greying hair and sagging skin. Have you noticed that there always seems to be far less ‘fifty something’s’ than an average mix of people you’d find walking on a street or enjoying a sunny day in a park. So why are there so few elders in corporate life? What happens to the average office dweller once he or she starts to produce grey hairs?

Natural wastage, I imagine, would account for a certain percentage dying, turning to child rearing or emigrating. But maybe there is a special floor in every office that is appointed for wrinklies, that takes the surplus from each floor and keeps them busy until retirement. Maybe there is a secret door where these poor individuals go through on a fictitious errand sent out by the master computer (part of the big monstrous billing system that controls many corporates) to never return. More likely is that these individuals are leaving the office one day and just not coming back, me thinks. Perhaps they get out into the open air and something happens then. They look to the sky and are given a sign that draws them away, never to return. I decided to investigate this phenomena to understand what really was happening to the 50 something’s and what I needed to expect when it was my time to become grey and form wrinkles.

I remember a recent boss who tried to stem the flow of ageing by dying his hair to hide the grey ones forming. I guess he aimed to provide himself with a few more years until the greyness took over and he had to accept he was next for the secret Door of No Return. He came back from holiday a changed man, or rather a dyed man, and gave his team some amusement for a while. No one dared say anything but he might have noticed a few looks directed at his hair instead of his eyes when he spoke to people. Black hair die never looks like black hair but some people kid themselves they can get away with it. It always ends up looking like you have died your hair, which is exactly what you don’t want it to look like, unless you are a Goth, which my boss currently wasn’t.

So let me tell you what I found out about these dissapearing wrinklies. No, they don’t go to an Elephant’s Graveyard or get touched by a dark suited hooded stranger who tells you your time is up and directs you to a small photo-me sized cubical to then be dissolved into dog food.

My research found that there was a more natural reason for the lack of 50 something’s in the corporate environment. It is in fact a part of the natural cycle of life that those in their 40’s decide enough is enough and begin planning their migration one by one to go off, take control of their lives and do something that they have always actually wanted to do.

There is a clock inside us all that ticks. It triggers our physical and mental development throughout the whole of our life and causes us to travel a journey from the little baby who sqweemed and sqweemed at our mumas to the very end where we can expect again to sqweem and sqweem but now at our own grown up children to plead to be taken away from the nasty nurse who wants to apply a bed bath.

But somewhere in the middle (and timing is different for everyone) the clock tells you that it is time to take flight and go do something that you were really designed to do in the first place. In recent years, due to change and disruption in the economic climate, there is a larger number than normal of people whose clocks are triggering the need for flight from corporatedom. My research found many good examples of this flight happening and the many reasons and influences on it.

Maybe another day I will publish more of my fascinating findings. Subscribe below.

What are your thoughts on corporate living and office dwelling? is it all part of the cycle of life now for most of us before we get to jump and escape to do become independent professionals?

Guy

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