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Exit loyalty.

People are waking up to the fact that loyalty to anyone other than your immediate loved ones is a sham. The team concept of selling your soul to the company is forever gone. Layoffs, downsizing, mergers and acquisitions tend to jade a person on being loyal. Because none of those concepts breed a sense of belonging to a group. Building a future. Or planning a family. One must go seek maximum self-worth because that’s what businesses do. Incorporate yourself, sell your skills to the highest bidder. That's how you get ahead. And stay in business. It costs a lot more now to keep food on the table and the lights on. Loyalty doesn’t cover those bills anymore.

JRR
Plymouth, Michigan



Design still matters.

Is it just me, or is that new Lexus really ugly? I think almost all of the new electric vehicles look like shit. I am probably in the minority saying this, but one of my prime concerns when buying a new car, which I do every few years, is its appearance. No matter how nice a new car is technically, if it's ugly to me, I won't buy it. And not just the electric cars but some of the non-electrics as well. I guess "attractive design" is no longer a concern for car makers.

Ted R.
Raleigh, North Carolina



Still bringin' it.

I have a new all-time favorite Autoextremist phrase starting this week… “no CEOs were harmed by this.” Nothing more perfectly sums the state of America, and not just business, better than this. Thank you for describing the current situation so eloquently yet again.

Kengineer
Dearborn, Michigan



Not Very Good.

As one of the Great Unwashed Salaried Ranks labouring away at one of the then "Big 3" automotive manufacturers in the late 1970's onward, I learned very quickly that any otherwise happy press announcements in the matter of increased corporate profits for a quarter were NOTHING whatever to celebrate -- because, curiously, they were a clue that cutbacks in our numbers were imminent.

Likewise, the corporate mantra of so-called "Stretch Goals": "...So you successfully achieved all of the aims that were set before you for the past quarter...? Good -- but why didn't you achieve an extra 10%...? Or more...?!"

A moving target never to be attained, nor paused to celebrate for having done so., either.

That sort of workplace environment was both demoralizing and a personal burden to bear. But the proverbial "...icing on the cake"...? How about the company unceremoniously removing a few of our retirement benefits from us, after we signed all of the papers and left it?

It took a class action lawsuit to successfully win that one.

We used to share a common belief in our number that was just oh-so-very appropriate at the time, now maybe even more so than back then:: "...Forget about personal respect or morality as you pass through the entry gates into this place -- because there simply isn't any..."

Eddy
Newcastle, Ontario, CANADA