-by Kumquat

I should probably start with the appropriate disclaimers: I am a full-time freelancer whose career decisions are completely at my discretion. I have a low (nearly nonexistent) threshold for office politicking. My impending motherhood is very likely to come with a significant cutback in home-office, and thus earning, hours. All of these things surely color this article. That said, I still think I'm right.

On October 27, 2005, the Houston Chronicle published a story about Suzanne Boler and her dismissal from work. (No, I don't read the Houston Chronicle. It was picked up in Salon.com's Broadsheet blog, something everyone should read.) While the story behind Ms. Boler's firing – a result of unpaid but allegedly approved leave to see her hubbbie to pre-Iraq military training – is generally shocking enough, what got me typing was her own shock because she "felt abandoned by people I thought cared for me."

I have seen too many folks endure office shenanigans and come out with hurt feelings. One friend even apologized to the HR person who laid her off for having to do the dirty deed. Her sympathy for the personnel manager didn't last long: she soon learned that she was expected to announce her own dismissal, and she had been lied to about "company-wide layoffs" that necessitated a pink slip only two weeks after receiving commendations on her work. (By the way, my friend's dastardly career crime? Giving birth to a special needs child.)

Most scenarios aren't quite as overwhelming (or litigation-friendly) as Boler's or my friend's. But the same truth holds: no matter what you think, companies are not your friends.

Long ago, that might have been different. Well, at least for the upper end of the scale. (I doubt the immigrant workers of the 1800s felt any more supported than the migrant farmers of today.) But if you listen to stories about the good old days, things sound near-utopian compared to modern offices. Long-time loyalty was rewarded with bonuses, raises, and cake. Companies had pension plans (and you didn't get fired for petty reasons a year before vesting). While a dirth of career opportunities for women and an assumption of fatherly distance made the family/work balance easier, there tended to be a sense of community around businesses. If you did good by them, they did good by you.

But living in the past – particularly a past that belongs probably more to our grandparents and great-grandparents than to our parents – is not only pointless but counterproductive. Which I'm sure is why, as far as I can tell, corporate offices encourage it. Management training includes lessons on (get this!) empathy. And while managers use those lessons to get more and better work out of their peons, they aren't taught to use them to make the office a friendlier place. Plain and simple, anything you experience behind the swipe card entryway of your workplace is a false friendship.

Empathy makes you feel as if the company cares. As if you need to kick your own ass to up your output. As if you need to work til 10 p.m. six nights a week, miss your daughter's soccer game, and apologize profusely when you take four hours off for an aunt's funeral. As if any hesitation to personal sacrifice means you have failed the company. Worse yet, you have hurt the company. Not just in a pragmatic way, but emotionally. The company is the friend whom you accidentally left behind at a rest stop without money or a cell phone in Iowa... for six hours while you drove cross-country before you remembered and headed back. The company now has the right to turn its back on you with a disappointed head-shake. It's your fault, you hear it say. And you believe those words.

But when the tables are turned, the disappointed friend routine doesn't work. Hell, you won't even get the chance to try the head-shake. To the company, you are not a friend. You are a commodity. You put in so much, you cost so much. When the balance shifts, they notice and react. It ends up, acting like a friend often increases what you put in. But if your costs rise too high, they don't hesitate to drop the act.

I'm not saying you can't be friends with a coworker, or even a supervisor. (Although I'd still recommend against admitting to either that you stole office supplies or called in sick to go to a Sox game.) But such a friendship can't stem the tide of corporate policy. Which means navigating office politics accordingly.

The rules are simple. In fact, they essentially boil down to an anti-Golden Rule: Don't give more to the company than you believe you will be rewarded (not appreciated) for. Friends are special; we go out of our way for them and know that there is an emotional reward, if nothing else. Companies, no matter how much you like the job, the atmosphere, and the perks, are not special; the only emotional reward is the one you create for yourself. Don't let your office trick you into thinking that you owe them for the right to work there.