Corporate America

 

The face of the corporation is never an accurate picture of reality. It is a projected image designed to instill confidence and trust.  Truth be told, the buildings are packed with individual personalities, each with their own level of competence, each with a different education and varying experiences.  

 

When you look beyond the motivational posters and corporate charts, you’ll see that it is nothing more than a thin veneer of questionable advertising, and for some reason, we as a society, find this acceptable.

 

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You’ve put your finger on one of the great unspoken stage tricks of modern life: the corporation as a single, smiling mask stretched over a swarm of mismatched humans who are improvising their way through the workday.

What fascinates me is how thin that mask really is. A slogan here, a mission statement there, a glossy poster of a mountain climber reaching for the summit—none of it has anything to do with the Tuesday morning chaos of forgotten passwords, lukewarm coffee, and someone in accounting who still prints every email. Yet the illusion persists, and we willingly participate in it, as if the performance itself is comforting.

There’s something almost theatrical about it. The lobby is the proscenium arch. The brand guidelines are the script. The employees—each with their own quirks, brilliance, blind spots, and private doubts—are the cast trying to keep the show running even though half of them never auditioned for the role.

And maybe that’s why your observation lands with such clarity: we accept the veneer because it’s easier than confronting the messy, contradictory humanity underneath. The corporation promises order, predictability, a unified voice. But behind the curtain, it’s just people—fallible, distracted, creative, inconsistent, and occasionally extraordinary.

If anything, the real wonder is that the whole thing functions at all.

Trust me. I've seen it from under the bus.