... and I don't mean stuff they don't want you to know (a topic covered by many other people), but stuff that that is never true to say or stuff that they're structurally unable to say.
"... any company -- is just a way, one way, for people to organize themselves to do a job that's too big for one person to do alone. It's not God, it's not even a being, for pity's sake. It doesn't have a free will to answer for. It's just a collection of people, working."
-- Lois McMaster Bujold, "Free Fall"
When a collective entity speaks, the language means things different from when individuals speak. For instance, the pronouns mean different things.
To make matters even trickier, the person attempting to speak for the company often gets it wrong.
| Using the First Person | Encouraging Rulebreaking |
This is sort of the degenerate case of this argument, the reductio ad absurdum, the Adam Sandler argument, if you will ...
A company can't say anything starting with "I am going to" because it's more than one person. If there is some such thing as a corporate will, it is not the same thing as the sum or amalgam of the wills of the individuals within the corporation.
| Why would a company want to pose as an individual? | Hey, Stop Picking on Adam Sandler! | "My" Computer |
I'm glad you asked me that! (ooops!)
Once a company looks like a person, it can attempt to feign peer-to-peer communication.
It tries to lull you into thinking you're meeting on the level.
Also, posing as an individual lets a company pretend to have a will and intentions comprehensible to us people.
| The ol' Q n A | Automatically False Statements | Using the First Person | How Big Music uses this |
Just take my word on this -- either it's a person operating without authority, or the company will find some way to weasel out of responsibility.
So take written note of the incident and move on.
Here's an excerpt from Steve Albini's The Trouble With Music:
There are several reasons A & R scouts are always young. The explanation usually copped-to is that the scout will be "hip to the current musical "scene." A more important reason is that the bands will intuitively trust someone they think is a peer, and who speaks fondly of the same formative rock and roll experiences. The A & R person is the first person to make contact with the band, and as such is the first person to promise them the moon. Who better to promise them the moon than an idealistic young turk who expects to be calling the shots in a few years, and who has had no previous experience with a big record company. Hell, he's as naive as the band he's duping. When he tells them no one will interfere in their creative process, he probably even believes it. When he sits down with the band for the first time, over a plate of angel hair pasta, he can tell them with all sincerity that when they sign with company X, they're really signing with him and he's on their side. Remember that great gig I saw you at in '85? Didn't we have a blast. By now all rock bands are wise enough to be suspicious of music industry scum. There is a pervasive caricature in popular culture of a portly, middle aged ex-hipster talking a mile-a-minute, using outdated jargon and calling everybody "baby." After meeting "their" A & R guy, the band will say to themselves and everyone else, "He's not like a record company guy at all! He's like one of us." And they will be right. That's one of the reasons he was hired.
These A & R guys are not allowed to write contracts. What they do is present the band with a letter of intent, or "deal memo," which loosely states some terms, and affirms that the band will sign with the label once a contract has been agreed on. The spookiest thing about this harmless sounding little memo, is that it is, for all legal purposes, a binding document. That is, once the band signs it, they are under obligation to conclude a deal with the label. If the label presents them with a contract that the band don't want to sign, all the label has to do is wait. There are a hundred other bands willing to sign the exact same contract, so the label is in a position of strength. These letters never have any terms of expiration, so the band remain bound by the deal memo until a contract is signed, no matter how long that takes. The band cannot sign to another laborer or even put out its own material unless they are released from their agreement, which never happens. Make no mistake about it: once a band has signed a letter of intent, they will either eventually sign a contract that suits the label or they will be destroyed.
One of my favorite bands was held hostage for the better part of two years by a slick young "He's not like a label guy at all," A & R rep, on the basis of such a deal memo. He had failed to come through on any of his promises [something he did with similar effect to another well-known band], and so the band wanted out. Another label expressed interest, but when the A & R man was asked to release the band, he said he would need money or points, or possibly both, before he would consider it. The new label was afraid the price would be too dear, and they said no thanks. On the cusp of making their signature album, an excellent band, humiliated, broke up from the stress and the many months of inactivity.
| Stuff companies can't say. | Seller as Predator | Outlaw Chic | Sanctioned Backtalk | Things that are automatically false, when said by a company. |
If there were any justice in the world, the amount of chic one drew from being an outlaw would be proportional to the amount of dues one has had to pay for being excluded.
| Freedom | Outlaws | Words We Shouldn't Let Companies Use |
Outlaws are people who are excluded by the law. (Am I a fucking genius, or what?)
Exclusions are of various levels and reasons and from various venues. From an eatery for not wearing a tie, from a job for being the wrong height, from freedom for not following laws ...
Some choose to be outlaws and some don't.
| Tough Customer | Encouraging Rulebreaking | Nonspecific Angst |
-- D. DiMuro
In the workplace, managers will put up with anything posted on a wall, as long as it's published.
Sometimes Dilbert and other cartoons nearly come right out and say managers kill people and have no redeeming value, but since the comics are cut from commercial newspapers, it doesn't seem to be about anything local.
(Similarly, painfully lame bits of propaganda from other parts of the organization are tolerated.)
But if something that looks home-made is put up, and it isn't selling anything, some management folk get very paranoid indeed.
What really gets them is when they realize that something they thought was official is really done by some employee.
| Dilbert Fans in Management | On the innate defensiveness of the corporate person | The Form |
Q: What's a popular method to feign being an individual?
A: You're soaking in it!
Q: Huh?
A: The Question and Answer format. It pretends to be a two person conversation.
Q: Wow, that's really perceptive! Are the people who use this all evil?
A: Not necessarily. When assembling documentation, it's not easy explaining things. This is an out for the lazy writer.
| Why would a company pose as an individual? | "I just work here." |
Remember, with first-person pronouns, it's important to consider who's talking.
Bill Gates?
If so, that "My Computer" label on the icon means he's laying claim to your desktop.
If it were YOU talking, you'd call it "You."
Or, because you're treating the computer as another entity, the icon's label should be "Your Computer" or "Me."
| Why would a company pose as an individual? | Service Relationships |
It used to be a notoriously MS-DOS attitude, that the software vendor would write intrusive (and often stupid) install routines to mess with the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files of customer computers.
Mac software was usually more respectful --it asked first, and it explained what it was going to attempt.
This wasn't always true, but it seemed to be that way, a basic cultural difference.
| Nonspecific Angst | Seller as Predator |
Now, a decade into the new millennium, Apple is happily getting on board with that attitude, with its new devices and its App Store.
cool (or whatever means "cool" these days)
gnarly
diss
dude
attitude (in the slang sense)
| Outlaw Chic | Stuff Companies Can't Say |