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    The Corporate America Survival Guide
    The Corporate America Survival Guide
    The Corporate America Survival Guide
    Ebook120 pages2 hours

    The Corporate America Survival Guide

    By Piers T. Benjamin

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    About this ebook

    The Corporate America Survival Guide is a candid, honest look at what it takes to maintain your sanity and happiness while working in Corporate America. Written in short, easy to digest chapters, the book provides straightforward, actionable suggestions for coping with the endless headaches of working for a corporation, and provides assurance that you are not the only person in your workplace who feels like they've sold their soul. Whether you've just started your first job after college, or are stuck in middle-management hell, The Corporate America Survival Guide uses humor and real-life examples to help you stay focused on what's really important in life (hint: it’s not your job).

    Part guru, part rebel, Piers T Benjamin is the pen name for a professional author and executive with decades of business experience in the United States. For obvious reasons, he did not publish this book under his real name.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPiers T. Benjamin
    Release dateAug 6, 2012
    ISBN9781476083544
    The Corporate America Survival Guide
    Author

    Piers T. Benjamin

    Piers T. Benjamin is just another corporate drone trying to get by, but he knows better than to believe the hype his employer spits out every weekday. He wears a suit and tie, has an MBA from a top business school, and works in a major American city. He is married to a beautiful blond trophy wife, has 2.5 kids, lives in the suburbs, drives a luxury SUV, and plays golf at the country club. If you look around, you may even find that he is sitting in the cubicle right next to you.

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      Book preview

      The Corporate America Survival Guide - Piers T. Benjamin

      The Corporate America Survival Guide

      Published by Piers T. Benjamin

      Copyright © 2012 Piers T Benjamin

      Smashwords Edition

      All Rights Reserved

      Cover Photo:

      New York State of Mind, by Andy Gee

      http://www.flickr.com/photos/andymcgee/4816181437/sizes/o/

      Copyright © 2012 used via Creative Commons

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard word of the author.

      Biography

      Piers T. Benjamin is just another corporate drone trying to get by, but he knows better than to believe the hype his employer spits out every weekday. He wears a suit and tie, has an MBA from a top business school, and works in a major American city. He is married to a beautiful blond trophy wife, has 2.5 kids, lives in the suburbs, drives a luxury SUV, and plays golf at the country club. If you look around, you may even find that he is sitting in the cubicle right next to you.

      Follow Piers at:

      http://www.ptbenjamin.com

      https://www.facebook.com/piers.t.benjamin

      "If you look annoyed all the time, people think you’re busy."

      George Costanza

      "Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do"

      Oscar Wilde

      "America is a country that doesn't know where it is going but is determined to set a speed record getting there."

      Laurence J. Peter

      "One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."

      Bertrand Russell

      "I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours."

      Jerome K. Jerome

      "Being busy does not always mean real work."

      Thomas Edison

      "Going to work for a large company is like getting on a train. Are you going sixty miles an hour or is the train going sixty miles an hour and you're just sitting still?"

      J. Paul Getty

      "The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office."

      Robert Frost

      "Work is a necessary evil to be avoided."

      Mark Twain

      "If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?"

      Laurence J. Peter

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      Lesson 1: Corporations do not have souls.

      Lesson 2: It’s a game. Keep score.

      Lesson 3: Never be the person who cares the most.

      Lesson 4: Synergy is a dirty word.

      Lesson 5: Once you leave, you’re dead to us.

      Lesson 6: When in doubt, nod and smile.

      Lesson 7: Let your freak flag fly.

      Lesson 8: Bathroom Stalls; the new corner office.

      Lesson 9: Your boss has no life.

      Lesson 10: Corporate culture is a myth.

      Lesson 11: If you do the job too well, you’ll never get promoted.

      Lesson 12: Everybody panic!!

      Lesson 13: It’s their shit.

      Lesson 14: The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Don’t squeak.

      Lesson 15: It’s not like anyone died on the operating table.

      Lesson 16: After five, my life is mine.

      Lesson 17: Fuck it.

      Introduction

      Ok, let’s just put this out on the table. For most of us, Corporate America is a soul-crushing, unimaginative, alternate universe where the laws of common sense and reason don’t apply and busywork is rewarded with inflated egos and long titles. It’s like Alice in Wonderland, except CEOs in the United States sit in luxurious conference rooms and drink coffee instead of attending the Mad Hatter’s tea party (they do dress alike, though, and I’d love to see top hats and pocket watches come back in fashion).

      Odds are, that’s why you picked up this book. Every now and then (perhaps every day), there is this moment of clarity where you probably shake your head and laugh, or yell, or cry at the insanity of it all. Maybe it’s in your car, or during lunch. Maybe it’s at happy hour, or at dinner with your spouse or partner. Regardless, we all want to know that we’re not the only one who feels this way.

      Trust me, you’re not.

      This book was written for two reasons; first, to help you cope and know that there are others like you out there. People with real lives that are more important than what’s going on at the office. People who know that a job is just a job and that when we shuffle off this mortal coil, our last dying thought will not be, I should’ve finished that report for Patterson. It amazes me how easy it is for all of us to get sucked into believing that work is the driving force behind our essence and being, and hopefully this book with bring you back into reality with a sense of humor and irreverence for your employer.

      Secondly, I hope this book will truly help you cope with your job and keep things into perspective. Although much of this text is tongue-in-cheek, there are some kernels of truth to each of these lessons, all of which can be applied to your daily life. Some of these I’ve learned myself through decades in the corporate world. Others have been wisely handed-down to me from the most unlikely people – those corporate cogs who never seem (or want) to climb the corporate ladder.

      That guy who always has a meeting at 4:00 every day and has had the same job for 15 years without a care in the world? Management doesn’t like him, but he may be your office Yoda in disguise. There’s a reason he’s able to shrug everything off, actually go on vacation without checking his blackberry 12 times a day, and is up-to-date on pop culture.

      The bottom line is this; somewhere between this guy and being a stressed-out, unhealthy Type A overachiever, there’s a middle ground. Maybe this book will help you find it.

      Lesson 1: Corporations do not have souls.

      Thanks to technology, the media, and the pursuit of the almighty dollar, the human race can pretty much spin anything to tug at our collective heartstrings. Advertising has existed ever since cavemen tried to trade clubs for food back before we developed language. However, we’ve gotten much better at it since then. It’s probably safe to assume that shortly after the printing press was created, someone came up with the idea of printing information on paper to convince people to buy something. With the dawn of radio, we learned how to weave ads into radio plays and shows. It probably wasn’t long before Little Orphan Annie was on the air before someone realized that all those kids across America would also be willing to listen to her ramble about all the vitamins and great taste in Ovaltine. Not surprisingly, it worked, and so the trend continued into the TV age, where it really grew legs and sprinted through the second half of the 20th Century. In the 1990’s, we pumped it full of steroids, unleashed it onto the internet, and made money hand over fist. Today, we’re figuring out how to take that one step further as advertising and selling crap move into the new realm of mobile technology, including smartphones and tablet computers.

      Along the way, Corporate America’s ability to market consumer goods has been drastically refined to a frighteningly mind-reading status. What once was a dull butter knife soon became honed into a razor-sharp samurai sword, and is now continuing to evolve into a laser that can target the part of your brain that wants to buy this season’s trendy handbag all the way from China, and can do so while you sleep.

      But what does advertising have to do with corporations? Other than the fact that ads make us want to buy crap we don’t need (and never even knew existed), what’s the point? How did we get here?

      Well, the ever-growing ability of advertisers and marketers to influence your opinions and views has moved in recent decades beyond just getting us to buy stuff. Years of proven research around consumer behavior (behavioral psychology for business) has seeped into other areas of the corporate world. Originally, advertising’s sole purpose was to move products. However, it wasn’t long before that role expanded into what businesses and producers of consumer products now think of as brand management. In other words, what does brand XYZ mean to you? How does that particular toothpaste make you feel about yourself? What emotional responses do you have to that soda you buy religiously? Won’t the Joneses be jealous of your brand-new luxury car and the 83 inch LCD television you just installed with 32 speakers of surround sound?

      In fact, corporations have gotten so good at this, they’ve learned how to create an identity for a product out of thin air. More importantly, once that brand is developed and firmly planted in the minds of consumers, businesses stretch that identity across

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