memes

Fun fact: Abusers are more likely to be family members than strangers.

Maybe that's what they're trying to say?

gives that teacher who says "okay, friends!" and "And the most important rule is: have fun!" vibes

But, they smile and try to make jokes. They put up signs, like, "Teamwork makes the dream work." They seem friendly, and seem to care, and sometimes even buy pizza.

One mention of unionizing brings that illusion crashing down, though. They show their true face, then.

When I was first started working as a lawyer. I was working for a big law office. They would tell us how we will be the part of the family and they would take care of us and some other shit. They would give us (the rookies) certain amount of court files depending our specialization daily, that we needed to work on, write up the paperwork and put into the out going folders in the appropriate category. I would go early and be done by the lunch break. And I would ask if they anything extra for me they would say no and I'll start playing games on my personal laptop. This would irk the shit out of my manager there. He would complain and talk shit about it to my face and I would ask him if he had anything new for me to work on and fucker couldn't come up with anything because the daily work would be divided by the higher ups and not him. After 6 months of working there one day he was talking shit to me about how I'm not a serious worker, slacker etc... I got up gathered my things and told him I quit and he can fuck right off. Next day they called me back in to talk to me about why I quit. I told them to ask that fuck face and hang up.

It's performance review season. Boy am I hearing this a lot

There are rare work environments where you gel so well with your little group a familial friendship forms that lasts beyond that job.

But it’s never invoked by management stating nonsense like this.

Just leave it, you dont need to work in toxic space

Any time you hear management say that, you can guarantee they're saying it to guilt trip you into letting them abuse you.

Yeah. Until it says in an email that you need to get let go. Fuck em.

Some CS rep said to me the other day when I was asking about a bogus charge on my account, "thank you for being part of our family"

I said "family doesn't usually charge money, but go on"

I got a partial refund.

I was asked by my boss to interview this person who he thought would be perfect in the open position I had. He thought the world of her. The interview was really good, I saw what he saw. She had said more than once that her team was like a family, which was odd but I didn't know better yet.

We walked back to her office and passed by her team. We stopped at her top performer and she highlighted how great they are and proud of treating everyone as family and the look on his face said it all. She's so full of shit and the contempt he had for her was barely containable. And she didn't even fucking notice!

As someone who's been in management for 3+ decades I can firmly tell you if your leader tells you that, RUN!

Or get them fired. This job market is a bitch so quitting may not be the best option.

Edit: I didn't hire her. Less than a year later HR fired her after an investigation. I don't know any of the details and wouldn't share if I did. Dodged that bullet.

I also told my boss what I saw and he commended me for my choice.

Unrelated this boss (who I will think very highly of) was on vacation in Greece a few years later and was murdered in his hotel room. Still haunts me today.

There is a for-profit medical clinic near me where they told the workers that " we're all just really cool and we love our jobs so we don't take breaks" - they didn't allow workers to take breaks as required by law so I created pamphlets about how to report and get compensation for wage theft and I passed them out on all the cars outside the clinic.

"With my family, that means I can expect a knife in the front as well as the back. Are you sure you want to push for the whole 'family' narrative?"

I would involuntarily laugh at this.

"Clearly you don't know my family, we're like wolves. Yes, we'll back you up, but we'll also pounce on the weak so they either toughen up or die. Is that really what you want?"

I once thought this was a good thing that meant I was safe and well taken care of while being treated as family. Then I realized this also applied to all of the people who were genuinely terrible at their jobs, making horrible decisions for the company, affecting not just my ability to do good work, but the company's ability to provide. Nobody ever got fired and bad managers got promoted because nobody was ever critical of them. The rot spread and the company never reached the heights of their earliest success.

RED FLAG! RUN!

Usually means we expect to grift you into doing things for free

Criminal childhood indoctrination organizations like child armies and cults use the same tactics, I wonder how happy they'll be to learn what great company they keep by acting like David koresh, Charlie manson, or Jim Jones while also insinuating you're a child and are dumb enough to be manipulated by such bullshit.

Aeon Flux?