The Parable of the Can Opener

This is a can opener. Specifically, it's the Hamilton Beach 76606ZA Smooth Touch Electric Automatic Can Opener with Easy Push Down Lever. Looks like you can pick it up from Amazon for about $30 US right now. I have one, it works pretty well, I suppose. I've only used it once.

Let's get back to that in a minute.

One week ago today was my last day at my job. This was not my decision. I was notified a week and a half prior that it would be my last day. The reason is not important, ultimately. I worked for the same company for thirteen years. I thought I would retire from this company. Well, more likely experience 過労死 (karoshi, or working yourself to death), but in the United States that's about as close to retirement most people will manage.

At that job I was involved in issues that were high-profile enough to make international news. Work I did appeared in news articles. The last several months I worked fifty- to sixty-hours a week. I received numerous recognitions and awards for innovative thinking. While I've never had any illusion that any hard work or loyalty would be rewarded in any meaningful way, I did think it would at least keep me employed.

It did not.

Like many large corporations, my former employer has an internal recognition program where you can earn points to spend on cheap junk in their online catalog. Rather than let my accumulated points go to waste, I found something in the catalog to use them on. An electric can opener.

So thirteen years service and hard work got me a week and a half notice and an electric can opener. No severance. No health benefits. No going away party.

There are many lessons one might draw from this. We can talk about the meat grinder of American corporate culture. We could talk about the lack of worker protections in the United States. We could discuss the lack of a social safety net. And to be sure, those are all important and necessary discussions. But here and now I want to talk about something else.

One common theme of management in corporate America is that of personal growth. But in those discussions one can see that by personal growth is defined as either climbing the corporate ladder, or by gaining skills that are of us to the job. It's all for the company, which makes sense, but it's always framed as personal growth. That message is repeated so often and with such force even I had started to think about my life through that lens. "What can I learn?" became "what can I learn that benefits my employer?" "How can I improve myself?" became "how can I improve myself to make my employer happy?"

So now I spend part of my days job hunting, trying to find a position that fits my set of patchwork skills that I acquired not to improve myself, but because it's what my employer wanted.

In all that time I learned little, developed few skills because it was what I wanted.

And that makes me sad.

Seven days notice, a set of random skills that I only have because they were necessary to my employer, and a shove out the door.

And an electric can opener.