1. A Casino is legally required to post the odds of each bet. Corporate workplaces can lie about your chances of rising to the top.
2. If you gamble in a casino using a line of credit and lose, you can file for bankruptcy. If you take out a student loan to go to college and can’t advance on the job, you may be stuck with $200,000 in debt for life.
3. A Casino will welcome senior citizens. In the Corporate workplace, even 35 can be over the hill for some jobs.
4. If by luck you win in a casino, at least you will get credit for the win and the prize. In the corporate workplace, someone else will get credit for your idea and a raise.
5. Getting access to a rigged game thanks to an inside friend at a casino is grounds for criminal prosecution. In the corporate world, finding a friend to help you rig the hiring process in corporate is networking and soft skills.
6. At the poker table everyone admits that they are there to take money out of your pocket. In the corporate workplace, everyone is a “team player.”
7. At a casino, you can freely choose what game to play, changing from sports betting to poker to roulette. In the corporate workplace, you have to be a sycophant to be allowed to even try a career track.
8. At a casino, if the Blackjack dealer intentionally handed a person a blackjack, the police would arrive in ten minutes. In the corporate workplace, if a manager handed a person an easy sales lead to look good, that would be “investing a person with high potential.” In other words, the casino has no idea who will win on any given day. In the corporate working world, the winners might be determined ahead of time by management.
9. At a casino, if you have to stop gambling for a year due to “life happening” you will be welcomed back with open arms. In the corporate workplace, if you decide to take a year off to travel or take care of a family member, you will be asked like a common criminal to account for the gap in employment.
10. At a casino, you can get a free drink and drink by yourself. In the corporate workplace, you have to spend money to go out drinking with people who you hate, that will stab you in the back
Right there. That’s why education shouldn’t be run by or TAUGHT by corporations.
Thank you for your article. I appreciated how you used humor and truth to make some very good points.
The sad thing is, not for profit workplaces can be like this too. As not for profits become more corporatized in structure, the same behaviors and culture that you describe appear. I have worked for at least one not for profit that I can only describe as “more corporate than corporate”. The need to beg for funding forces not for profits become like the corporations they have to schmooze for funding. So, you get boards that consist of self-important and self-interested people with “influence”, hierarchies of power and the creation of divided class systems within the workplace.
It is tragic that these are the kind of workplaces that we are creating and that our children will have to work in one day. It is interesting that there is international emphasis on bullying as it impacts children and adolescents. Yet, it is rampant, although much more silent and insidious in many adult workplaces.
On a more positive note, I have also experienced being part of a deliberately non-hierarchical women’s organization, which has renewed my hope that there are alternative workplace structures that can be effective. This requires considerable effort though, because you have to invest time and energy over and above the work that needs to be done to resolving tensions related to power and to determine how accountabilities are distributed.