Author’s Native Language:
Is the food and cooking industry a new hideout for abusive people and taskmasters? This is what we’re about to see….
As modern overseers [slave-drivers], psychopaths can find an echo in today’s corporate needs. Just yesterday, I came across a post on Facebook that dealt with the exploitation and mistreatment of people in professional kitchens. About this, I commented:
My comment on Facebook
I have long observed a “culture” of abuse in this professional area. We can see this on TV shows where participants are humiliated, mistreated and almost no one finds it offensive or at least strange.
Over time, these abusive behaviors are considered normal and people with a profile of abusers end up looking for these environments to fulfill their unspeakable desires….
I confess that I like to see people preparing meals, but I stopped watching these shows because I didn’t agree with this culture of abuse and didn’t want to collaborate with it.
In addition, I also stop watching because these behaviors negatively affect my mood, but there are people who find it funny to see someone screaming at people and saying that the participant doesn’t know what to do or that they are incompetent…..
Nobody deserves these things.
The art of cooking, taskmasters and abusive behavior
In the case of this context of the “art of cooking”, the abusive behavior of some stars in the mass media promotes a desensitization to the practices that we should all be concerned about and condemn. In the corporate field, the behavioral pattern more or less follows this same logic.
Productivity, the cult of personality and earnings set the context for abusive practices to take hold and thrive. These are stories we commonly see in the bars of our labor courts.
It’s that extra hour worked and not paid, it’s paying for the service related to the performance of a function but requiring the professional to perform several. This occurs in the field of teaching when an organization pays its teachers per class hour, but they are required to guide end-of-course work as a “voluntary” activity or supervise internships, etc.
Who, in their right mind, would have the stomach to feed and maintain this system? However, we found several people quite qualified to do so. It is in this context that people with some degree of psychopathy meet the darkest and most greedy corporate purposes. They are people able to assume the role of overseers.
How a psychopath looks like?
This is the brief list:
How do they present themselves to the others?
- They show high self-confidence and superficial “charm”. (Psychopaths exaggerate self-trust);
- They talk grandiosely about themselves. (Psychopaths look huge, they are verbal exhibitionists);
- They often tell lies. (Psychopaths don’t care about the truth.).
Affective behavior of psychopaths
- They demonstrate irresponsibility and “damage control” when a problem arises. (Psychopaths don’t like to do the right thing. They take shortcuts and when something bad happens they minimize the consequences);
- There is a perceived lack of remorse or guilt in their behavior. (Psychopaths don’t feel bad when they do bad things.);
- They feel an excessive need to carry out intense activities, or have a tendency to become bored if the activities do not happen. (Psychopaths can’t stand periods of boredom.).
How does look like their social behavior?
- It’s excessively impulsive. (Psychopaths are very, very impulsive.);
- it’s deceitful or manipulative. (Psychopaths often believe they can manipulate anyone around them);
- They show difficulty in becoming emotionally intimate. (Psychopaths have trouble showing genuine emotions, which turns out to be evident in longer, more intimate relationships);
- They get caught up in situations of insensitivity or lack of empathy. (Psychopaths just don’t care about other people’s emotions.);
- It is noticed that they can “parasitize” other people relatively easily. (Psychopaths prefer not to work for a living. They find it easier to take other people’s things or live off them.);
- They have a history of promiscuous sexual behavior. (Psychopaths like to “circulate” between people);
- They demonstrate difficulty in maintaining long-term relationships. (Psychopaths have difficulties in committing for the long term, and when they do, the relationship is abusive);
- They tend to have short-term goals only. (Psychopaths prefer crazy schemes [Ponzi-type, for example] over life or career goals.);
- They demonstrate difficulty in taking responsibility for their own actions. (For a psychopath, it’s always someone else’s fault)
Their antisocial behavior
- They have a history of early behavioral problems in relation to cruelty. (As children, psychopaths often have a history of cruelty to others, starting with animals);
- They have difficulty in controlling socially inappropriate behaviors. (Psychopaths have difficulty meeting social norms);
- They tend to “adapt” the rules in its favor, in a very versatile way. (Psychopaths differ from normal criminals in that they don’t really care what kind of laws they break – they break any of them, in the circumstances that best suit them).
The modern taskmasters
So, making a quick analysis of the characteristics of psychopaths, the modern taskmasters, listed above, we can understand that insensitive and manipulative people fit very well into the profiles necessary to comply with perverse and exploitative norms and practices in the work environment.
Not only in the midst of cooking pans, vegetables and tv shows, but all over the other types of workplaces.
I am not accusing corporations of being generally harsh or randomly employing these people. It is the opposite, indeed: when they do, it is intentionally.
Although we do not expect the adoption of these practices to be admitted by those who admit them, it is fair to recognize a large number of organizations that are concerned with the physical and mental health of their employees and also with the faithful compliance with labor legislation.
However, it is necessary to be alert to the possibility of the existence of modern taskmasters [slave-drivers] helps us to identify abusive situations and/or practices in corporate environments. Given this awareness, affected individuals can reflect on their specific situation and make a decision.
Taskmasters abuse at the workplaces
I remember my own professional and academic trajectory during its more than 40 years. The process of abuse at work is not too explicit. I can’t remember anyone having confessed to do it. All the thousands of hours worked without any additional remuneration were explained by institutional needs and by the “greater good” that an individual sacrifice could mean. This logic has always worked and continues to do so as a strategy to extract more work from those who were not initially committed to.
Without extending our argument, I’d like to conclude by pointing out that there is a profile of a person who does not experience the suffering we feel when participating in exploratory and abusive practices. Those people, the modern taskmasters, are, in the scientific literature, functional psychopaths for some time, and you should be very careful with them in your life.
Even the FBI agrees with that: Abusive behavior in corporations
Keep following us up. Sergio SennaThis post is also available in pt_BR.