The Bait and Switch
We are taught to be “good workers.” We are told that if we trade our best years, our steady hands, and our mental health to a system, that system becomes our scaffold. We trade the only thing we truly own — our life — for a digital balance in a bank account.
Some call this “building a career.” I call it trading a finite asset for a variable promise.
The Myth of the “Resource”
The term Human Resources is a masterpiece of corporate gaslighting. In any other department, a “resource” is something you maintain. If a company leases a fleet of trucks, they don’t stop paying for oil changes when the trucks are off the road.
But when the human resource shows up with a maintenance issue — a heart that falters, a body that breaks, or a family that needs them — the accounting shifts. Suddenly, you aren’t an asset to be maintained; you are a liability to be liquidated, deferred, or written off.
FMLA: Protection as Theater
This is where the farce of “Protected Leave” reveals itself. We have built a system that is legally compassionate but practically sadistic.
FMLA is sold as job protection, but anyone who has used it knows the truth: it protects the chair, not the person sitting in it. You are handed a stack of “rights” that consist mostly of instructions on how to pay your own premiums while you aren’t earning.
You aren’t fired; you are “restructured.”
You aren’t punished; your “role has evolved.”
It is procedural anesthesia. It exists to keep the lawyers satisfied while the individual is handed a bill for the privilege of being sick.
The Debt-Backed Lie
Why is the system so eager to default on us? Because the very money we spent those years earning is itself a default. We traded our finite health for promises to pay backed by U.S. debt.
We are working for a currency designed to lose value, provided by employers designed to lose interest the moment we aren’t “productive.” It is a double theft: the money in your pocket is devalued while you’re working, and your personhood is devalued the moment you stop.
Beyond the Identity Smoke Screen
While we argue over identity — who has the most “privilege” or who carries the most “inherited guilt” — the ledger is being balanced against all of us. The system doesn’t care if you are white, black, or purple when it comes to the bottom line. It only cares if you are a functioning unit.
If we spent half as much time demanding contractual integrity as we do demanding “inclusive language,” we might notice we’re all handed the same payment instructions at the end of the day.
Conclusion
I’m not asking for a handout; I’m asking for an honest deal. If the deal is Human Resources, then act like humans are worth maintaining. If the deal is Protected Leave, stop handing people an invoice while they’re in the hospital.
Until then, stop calling it compassion. Call it what it is: the business of using people up.
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