All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
The wacky things people do for money! Frank Gilford, the Australian whose sister was recently murdered in Saudi Arabia, got the rare opportunity to have his sister's murderers publicly beheaded - but traded sweet revenge for 1.7 million cold, hard Aussie dollars. For James Clark, on the other hand, money was a secondary motive in his 20-year career as a spy against the United States. "I was a (communist) sympathizer," Clark told a contact who (ouch!) turned out to be an undercover FBI agent. "Of course, the money had to come in there once in a while." Factor in the way free-spending missionaries buy up converts from Boston to Bombay and you might conclude that where Family, Country, and God are concerned, loyalty's favorite color is green. But don't blame money for loyalty's slump; even when people wrote in stone, relationships weren't as firmly etched. Abraham was the first to find out that God and Family are conflicting interests. Country doesn't fare much better: During the Revolutionary War, the Loyalists were the bad guys. Our current model of devotion to the three guiding principles is supposed to be the fervid piety of the Promise Keepers. (In a telling sign that America's view of loyalty is always tinged with suspicion, everybody seems to agree that the recent holypalooza in Washington was more frightening than inspiring.) But Bill Clinton's wobbly, warts-and-all steadfastness is probably a more accurate model of the complex and compromised nature of loyalty, especially when it's loyalty to an institution that has only money to recommend it.
This year's fetish for job allegiance sounds good, especially for companies that have nothing but loyalty left to recommend them. But as long as Scott Adams has another breath to draw, this trend seems doomed at the starting gate. When you can only work up a lukewarm devotion to the United States of America, how is Spacely Sprockets supposed to win your heart?
There's nothing new about the notion of company allegiance. Russell Baker, in his permanent role as cantankerous codger, was writing about the death of loyalty when getting laid off was still hip. And back when those inscrutable Japanese could do no wrong, wannabe sensei everywhere touted chu sei shin (loyalty) as the answer to all of America's problems. Now that the fickle finger of success has flushed Japan's economy down the toilet, we realize that Japanese management techniques are completely wrong in every way.
The 1997 flavor of allegiance speaks to a more pressing need. Unexpectedly faced with the tightest hiring market in more than two decades, managers have rediscovered the virtue of inspiring devotion and retaining employees, and are digging through the permafrost to get at loyalty's corpse. But the organizations most concerned about loyalty are the ones that have done the least to earn it. When the poor schmuck who a few years ago got axed by Chemical because he came over from the Chase side (or by Chase because he came from the Chemical side) gets swept up in the boss' sweaty embrace (complete with a company-paid tutorial and 100 percent 401(k) match), "Downsize this!" seems an appropriate response.
Even if employees can be resold on the notion of dedication (a short memory being the key to business success, it's not impossible), there's an even more important flaw in this whole inspiring confidence business. Motivating employees and getting them to stay with the company are different - maybe mutually exclusive - goals. The boss gives you money; you give him service. The better service you give, the more money you get. The economics are very simple, and this loyalty thing is just a way of trying to fudge an honest business deal.
The manager who measures loyalty by number of years served is more likely to get a reading of the least-dedicated employees than the most. The good workers are the ones who leave for better-paying jobs. Sure they may like the company, but the money has to come in there once in a while.
It's the underachieving bumps on a log who stay in the same jobs for years at a time, too lazy to spend the weekend combing the want ads, too disgruntled to bother asking for a promotion or even a raise, their hearts filling up with bile and bitterness that inevitably works itself out in the petty acts of vengeance Martin Sprouse detailed in Sabotage in the American Workplace.
Let's face it: If Kim Philby was the 20th century's model of betrayal, he was also MI5's most conventionally dedicated employee. Converted to communism while still in school, Philby put in years of top-notch service at Britain's spy agency, all the while doing more damage to the Free World than any other spy in history (that is to say, no real damage at all). By the same token, you can easily spot your company's most loyal employee - he's been there nine years, and right now he's lounging at his cubicle, playing Windows Freecell, stuffing down the morning's second bialy, 20 minutes into the day's third long-distance personal call.
Being surrounded by such stealthy disloyalty is hard cheese for the boss, but screw that rat bastard anyway; the real damage disloyalists do is to their own spirits. Sleeping through your job hurts you more than it hurts your company. Don't let misplaced allegiance turn you into fertilizer. If you want to show what loyalty is all about, quit your job.
This article appeared originally in Suck.
