Hi Brenda,

I wanted to reach out regarding a small observation I made in your last email. In telling me how to spend 30 minute meal break and encouraging me to cut it short for the company’s benefit, you violated US labor law.

Let’s correct this behavior and try to be more mindful of that “our company is not above the law” spirit so we can keep your momentum going in the right direction. :-)

Eric

See, the people that do this shit are well trained though. Brenda didn’t demand that he work during lunch and was in fact clear that he was within his rights to not. Instead, Brenda has simply suggested that it would look better and he would conform better if he worked some unpaid time.

They know how to skirt the law. They can still go fuck themselves though, the gaslighting assholes.

She did also say “correct this behaviour” which is the corpo way of saying “do it or else”

Corpo language is corpo language for a reason though: it is legally safe to deploy. Intent is so very very hard to litigate.

Doesn’t “correct this behavior” very directly imply that the current behavior (in this case, taking your full lunch break) is incorrect and therefore in need of correction, though?

It’s one thing to suggest something, but calling it a “correction” changes things, I’d think.

You’d think. Really, you would, I’m not being sarcastic.

I’ve also been around long enough to know that rational doesn’t really apply to corpos. As dumb and as frustrating as this is, I really don’t think this message would be actionable.