The key to surviving corporate America is to understand its rhetoric. "Organizational change," for instance, can mean that people are being let go, canned, laid off, or, in a softer sense, "given the opportunity to relocate to corporate headquarters."

This is the story of that exact scenario, where a Fortune 500 company closed shop at a profitable subsidiary in a neighboring state. Each person mulled the idea of exchanging a laid-back, business casual dress environment for a cafeteria, a fitness center and a strangling – by a necktie (corporate attire only, please) and organizational bureaucracy.

All of us – the Indian princess/database administrator/Green Card applicant, the volleyball-loving socially awkward company veteran, the Sean Connery imitator and the metrosexual included – reviewed piles of documentation and sat through 54,781 meetings about moving 100 miles north.

After two months, the men and women in suits arrived to document the documents, proactivate the buzzwords and cage the circus animals (aka tech support). Was the job worth uprooting families and lives? And why exactly do people give up their independence to become company drones?

I pledge allegiance
to the brand
of the corporation that hired me,
and to the bottom line
for which it stands,
one company,
under innumerable upper and middle management,
conflicted,
with paychecks and pink slips for all.

Latest News

Agent wrapup

February 14, 2010 - For those of you who have been following my literary agent list, you know that I've contacted a boatload of agents. Although some of given "Corporate Ties" favorable responses, I have not obtained an agent.

  Well, it's now time to move ahead without one.



I'm a robot!

February 02, 2010 - OK, technically speaking, I am a human being. But my friend, co-worker and "Corporate Ties" cover designer, Sean O'Connor, has constructed a robot in my likeness.

  All right, I guess "constructed" isn't the right word, as he hasn't built the robot (at least, not yet), but he has created a fair number of robot friends at the appropriately named site, my robot friends. Most of the mechanical inventions are based on O'Connor's friends, but he occasionally throws in a Santa Claus, Abraham Lincoln and so forth.



Book review: "Creative Firing" by Chester Burger

January 17, 2010 - In the current state of the U.S. economy, it's pretty difficult to avoid being laid off, fired or, for whatever reason, not having a job for a certain period of time. True, sometimes the employee is entirely to blame for his/her predicament, but more often than that, a company is trying to consolidate, move offices or, in general, save money against the bottom line. Many times, those doing the actual firing and layoffs have to make decisions they would prefer to ignore, yet they have no choice.

  Enter Chester Burger's book "Creative Firing: Why Management Firings Happen - and How to Reduce Them." This book runs through the gamut of upper management decisions and how to maintain some control and honor throughout the endeavor. I've read many a business book, and even though this book was published in 1972, nearly every principle still applies.

About the author

Ben Woods is a freelance writer who has written workplace- and humor-related articles for Belo Corporation and Scripps Interactive Newspaper Group websites, American City Business Journal newspapers and other technology and independent media websites. His first book, a tech-humor fiction novel titled "The Developers," delves into government conspiracy, online privacy and crazy people on the Internet.

He works in Baltimore as a web developer for Advertising.com, a Time Warner AOL subsidiary and the largest online display advertising network in the U.S. and U.K. During the past five years, he has held full-time computer programming positions with companies large and small, collected a stack of employee manuals and health insurance cards and worked with a litany of CEOs, PMPs, BBMs and A-HOLEs.

Woods (shown here while being suffocated with a necktie in the Amazon rainforest) has a journalism degree from Purdue University and is working on a master's degree in Professional Studies at Towson University in Baltimore.