Buy Me (1996)

The A Word in Your Ear column from the July 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sitting alone in an Indian restaurant has its pros and cons. The most obvious advantage is the lack of any polite requirement to share dishes. Leave such selfless collectivism to Methodist picnics. The confused belief that socialists favour everyone dipping into the same trough comes from the same stable as the belief that socialists want everyone to be dressed in grey uniforms (an indignity forced upon schoolchildren by conservative defenders of capitalism, not socialists). There is an advantage to be gained from solitude—an advantage too often turned into unattainable luxury for those whose time is rarely their own and homes are usually crowded. So, to be seated in the high-street Taj Mahal with a good book and your own onion bhajee is no bad thing.

The disadvantages come when you are stuck next to a table occupied by the salary slaves from hell. There is no escaping. Buried as you try to be in your book, the loud voices and objectionable chatter is intrusive to the extent that you have no choice but to become their auditory captive.

It was an illuminating experience— in a perverse kind of way. At the next table were two young men (late twenties) and a slightly younger woman. The men were employees of an investment bank. The woman, a law graduate, wanted to become one. Her interview was next week. Their job was to show her how to go for their job. Her job was to find out precisely what lies she needed to tell, clothes she needed wear, postures she needed to adopt and enthusiasms she needed to fake to convince their employers that her ability to be exploited was worth buying. It was an undignified scene. “Tell them that you find investment banking really exciting”, counselled the first one; “But don’t forget to badmouth commercial banking. Investment bankers hate commercial bankers,” added the second, like a big kid telling his mate how to get into the Bash Street Gang. “What about if they ask me why I want to work for them in particular?” she asked, her apparent innocence belying an immense willingness to assume the most disingenuous beliefs. “Well, you tell them that you’ve always admired us because we’re dynamic and know the market well,” responded the first one, resembling a boy forced to learn a catechism. “And whatever you do, let them know that you want to be at the cutting edge of international finance.” Other cutting edges were on my mind at the time, but I stuffed my gob and desisted from adding “restaurant rage” to the new-wave of tabloid crimes.

Never before has the utter prostitution of the job-seeker been quite so clear to me. What difference was there between the woman at the next table and a hooker learning the ropes? At least the hooker might have some sadness at her transformation from human into commodity. Not so the would-be investment banker. She was fully seduced by the pimps of capital, not only ready but eager to do whatever they would pay her for.

Increasingly it has come to pass that finding a job is less a transaction than a relationship, a faked affair of the heart. How often these days do we see salary slaves spending their leisure hours plotting new ways of serving the company? A whole new area of management has emerged designed to make workers excited in their exploitation. They call it corporate participation. “If you feel good we feel good, if we feel good . . . “ company talk has been diminished to the level of a Eurovision pop song; the responses expected from workers have reached the nadir of Maoist chants.

There are now books in the stores on how to sell yourself. I never picked one up in the fear the covers are made of glue, but those who have read them describe how depressingly objectifying they make you feel.

Maybe there are more proles who can afford to eat out these days, but at what price? Next time I’ll get a takeaway and eat it in the local Job Centre.

Steve Coleman