Belonging and The Great Resignation

Yesterday - two weeks after signing my contract with the university, two weeks before the start of the semester, and two weeks into many work hours of putting my three classes online - I got an email saying that I would not be teaching one of my classes; it was being given to a full-time faculty member whose other classes had not filled. I was furious and disappointed… Again.

Then overnight I had a dream worthy of Franz Kafka*…

I was a small flea riding on the rump of a slow-moving cow. The cow flicked its tail and I was flung into the air. Scrambling to find my way back onto the beast I heard a voice say: “If you don’t want to be flicked off again, stop hitching a ride on the cow’s ass.”

I awoke bubbling with laughter. Talk about a clear message from the unconscious! My inner Zen master showed me quite clearly where the “error” has been all along: Big institutions – (the university in question employs over 10,000 people) – are like big cows; they move slowly and flick their tails a lot and have no idea who might be inconvenienced back there, nor do they care. This is simply how it is. To get angry over the obvious is a sign that I am taking personally things which are impersonal. The first step to wellness is to acknowledge what is.

Does Your Workplace Share Your Values?

Now, cows need to be led and if you wanted to become big enough and important enough to be the cowherd you could have a say in how the cow moves, where it goes, what it is fed, and how it grooms itself. Or you could become a gadfly, stay small, and make trouble for the cow – which is the tactic favored by Socrates, for instance. (Note how the gadfly-troubled cow reacted in that situation!) Or, you could ask yourself what your real goal is, what your true values are, and whether staying on the cow’s rear end serves those real ends.

I take responsibility for the fact that I’ve stayed on the cow’s rear end for a full decade simply because I love teaching, and the university has routinely supplied me with students willing to go on the adventure of learning with me. Trying to figure out how to get 60 to 90 new people every four months to sign up for such an adventure would require a marketing budget which I don’t have and don’t wish to create. It’s clear that – at least up until now – I’ve been willing to put up with periodic tail-flicks that upset my plans and ruin weeks of work as collateral damage in service to the greater good of teaching and its rewards.

(The ethical problem of large institutions exploiting the goodwill and hard work of dedicated workers is a serious one, but that issue will have to wait for another post.)

But the problem with being a flea is that I do miss the sense of belonging, the mutual reciprocity, the extension of trust, the feeling of accountability and camaraderie which are all part of a genuinely rewarding work environment. This is a feeling I probably share with the 47 million workers who quit their jobs last year. Maybe you also miss that feeling – and here is why we’re not getting it in our current workplaces: Size matters!

The smaller the group the more each person’s contribution matters and the more able the group is to motivate, support and keep in check its members, which is why we can feel we belong. The larger the group the less any one person matters. The goal of all large institutions is to keep as well-nourished as possible in order to keep growing, so an institution can and will exploit as large a workforce as possible in fat times. But it also needs to keep its obligations as narrow and expendable as possible for the lean times, shucking off workers without regard when the bottom line demands. Workers can go from frontline heroes to fleas in a matter of moments, depending on the slightest shiver from the stock market or Federal Reserve.

Some Place Where Everybody Knows Your Name

But for many of us the constant reminders of our flea status are becoming harder to bear. And it is not only adjunct teachers who feel like fleas - nurses, military veterans, daycare personnel, emergency medics, senior care staff, truck drivers, public school teachers, Uber and Lyft gig workers… The list goes on and on. All of these folks are very little units in very big institutions being controlled by even bigger units of municipal, state, or federal governments, and the pressures of global economic forces which have no morals at all, only the motivation to survive and dominate. In these situations, we are experiencing the very opposite of what the Cheers sitcom theme song suggested:

Nobody seems glad you came,
and nobody knows your name.

That’s the price of being attached to something that is “too big” for human values.

Social psychologists and anthropologist have been telling us for years that Homo sapiens have certain set points for different kinds of community. The limit for “everybody knows your name” groupings cuts off at 150 people. This has become known as the “Dunbar Number” for the British anthropologist who did the research. If your group gets larger than that number, rules and regulations, sub-groupings, committee meetings, and hierarchies will automatically form. You can see this 150 number in all sorts of little ways: Wedding planners will tell you that 90% of weddings have guest lists of about 150. Long-lasting church congregations have no more than 150 members. Clubs seem to settle in the sweet spot of 150 active members. Successful social networks converge around the 150-member range.

When start-up companies grow towards and then exceed 150 employees, “weird things happen” says Facebook Chief Officer, Chris Cox. He contends that numerous CEOs with whom he has spoken have noticed this phenomenon, that once you hit the 150 mark “the company needs more structure for communications and decision-making.” (See Quartz article.) If you’re interested in the background research you can read more about it in Robin Dunbar’s book, Friends: Understanding the Power of Our Most Important Relationships, but for our immediate purposes the question is: Do you have your nonhierarchical group of 150? Do you have a place where everybody knows your name and is glad you came?

Quitting Your Job

Since the pandemic ravaged our social interactions many of us have been ever more reliant on tenuous work connections to feed our hunger for community. But for those of us getting a paycheck from large bureaucratic institutions that is an unrealistic expectation. If, in that scenario, you are the flea, you must accept that the cow will never know your name. Which is why so many fleas are running away to join the flea circus! Welcome to The Great Resignation! (Incidentally, a Cirque du Soleil touring show has about 75 performers and an additional 75 crew and staff…and Voilà!)

In spite of the pandemic there were 4.4 million new start-up businesses registered in the United States last year, the exact number of Americans who quit their jobs in April… and in March… and in February… In fact, in 20 47 million Americans quit their jobs and if the trend holds another 48 million will quit in 2022. (see Business Insider article) So if 10% of those who are quitting end up starting their own businesses there’s a good chance that you’ll be able to join a small group of under 150 people with whom to enjoy a shared vision and the satisfaction of teamwork with folks who will be glad you came!

I have a sense that the pandemic and The Great Resignation are linked in the same way that a frog is linked to the proverbial pot of slowly boiled water: There does come a tipping point when the frog notices the heat and reacts by leaping out of the pot. (Someone actually ran the experiment on this to put the old wive’s tale to rest – see link below.) The pandemic gave us the chance to lift our heads long enough from the desk to notice we were uncomfortably warm at work… and we’ve jumped… and we’re still hopping!

You will have noticed that I’ve exalted the worker from the status of a flea to the status of a frog, not a giant leap for mankind, but at least it’s a smart frog with the wits to get out of hot water. The question now is what role we actually want to play and are willing to play in the great kitchen of the American economy.

Long Live the Great Resignation!

~ Rebecca

*Kafka wrote the play Metamorphosis which follows the life of Gregor Samsa who awakes one morning to find himself transformed into a human-size insect.

Quartz article: https://qz.com/846530/something-weird-happens-to-companies-when-they-hit-150-people/

Business Insider article: https://www.businessinsider.com/americans-quit-at-near-record-rate-great-resignation-forever-resignation-2022-6

Debunking the frog myth: Humans, sadly will continue to burn fossil fuels and heat up their planet until the species is doomed, but that is another topic. https://www.stevefenton.co.uk/2022/02/lessons-from-the-debunked-boiling-frog/