JunkDror

“My internship is so much more corporate than yours,” – real business student.

In deciding to go to business school, I was well aware of the archetypes I would find behind those cold, soulless walls: Chad would arrive to class exposing his toes in the most atrocious flip flops and discussing stocks in a Valley-girl equivalent, drawn out pattern of speech; Emma, head-to-toe in overpriced athleisure, is nowhere near as insufferable as Chad, but still never forgets to diss her less flashy peers in the most distasteful and ignorant way possible. Without fail, business school breeds the next generation of unethical businessmen and women prepared to fuel the world’s growing socioeconomic disparities. 

How did I end up here? Fear, insecurity, naivety, avarice, expectation. At seventeen years old, I was a self-proclaimed creative with faulty craftsmanship skills and too intimidated to begin an academic pursuit of genuine interest – art, design, architecture, film, journalism – really anything but business. Maybe it was a trauma response to the financial insecurity in my household, or perhaps I felt inclined to live up to the “American Dream” cliche projected towards first-generation U.S. citizens. In any case, the ego won that battle and my now enlightened self is paying the price, scrambling to find fulfilling creative outlets to turn to in my leisurely hours (i.e. a half-assed minor in the arts or the birth of this mediocre blog) and living with the haunting shadow of an undergraduate business curriculum. 

Core classes are as tedious and formulaic as you would imagine – arithmetic, spreadsheets, analytics. The occasional management and communications courses consist of case studies that teach you various methods of killing small businesses, manipulating a consumer’s decisions, and committing fraud. Guest speakers use their one hour in front of the largest audience of their life to rave about their external motivations and are equally insightful in detailing how they disrupt impoverished neighborhoods through their private equity ventures.

Could a concentration in accounting or finance have been potentially more productive in acquiring hard skills in this industry at the very least? Yes, but then I would have really been a sell out!

All the while, businessmen and women have perks most ordinary people will never relish in. Entrepreneurs, the backbone to disruptive innovation, are awarded the pleasure of hiring employees at nearly no cost to the company. In exploiting their workers by paying them extremely low wages (if anything at all) for exceedingly long hours of labor, companies can allocate the savings to C-Suite salaries and “philanthropic donations” for genocidal causes. The opportunist businessman and woman is encouraged to leverage both market conditions and personal brand to seize high-profile deals irrelevant to their expertise in the name of omnipotence and vengeance. For instance, the average felon will often be denied work in healthcare, government, financial institutions, tech, transportation, education, food service, and retail; but 34 felony convictions accompanied by a degree in economics surpasses caveats with HR and paves your way to the White House. 

Unlike the “fictional” businessman Eric Gordon, in Adam Sandler’s Billy Madison, I can discuss business ethics without having a manic episode that sends me into a gun-firing rage. I may take a more satirical approach, but I hope effective nonetheless.

At the end of the movie, he is met with the same violent fate, one directed by hatred and anger. I will not be determining his downfall as the morally correct course of action. To be clear, I believe “fighting fire with fire” or “seeking an eye for an eye,” is a Machiavellian standard too counterproductive and disgraceful to human intelligence. However, if I ever do take the dark path towards corporate corruption and denounce basic human dignities, I beg you… do not let the bullet miss.