Don Draper on Amazon Burnout
What’s Most Important About the New York Times Conversation on Work in the 21st Century?
At cocktail parties throughout the 70s and 80s I’d listen from my room as my dad and his friends carried on late into the night about their families, careers and pain-in-the-ass bosses.
Pat Lawler, Laurie McCaffrey, Tim York to name a few. Most were Irish American so they could tell a tale and add the bullshit to make it memorable. They all came of age in the post World War II workforce of the 50s and 60s — the Don Draper era — a version of which we are still riffing on today.
If I could roust these guys from the great beyond and sit them down at a table with a bottle of scotch, this is what they’d say about Amazon employee burnout as detailed in the New York Times:
What a bunch of sissies.
Ever hear the mantra “Never Explain, Never Complain?” In this group it went hand in hand with “The Irish don’t get even, they get revenge.” A more potent cocktail for inner turmoil has never existed.
My dad wouldn’t dream of engaging in a dialogue about job difficulties, existential or otherwise, outside of the regular late night bluster with old friends. That would be a sign of weakness and even more damaging, an indicator of self-involvement.
These guys stormed the beaches. In my dad’s case, he occupied post-Atomic bomb Kyoto, Japan. They’d seen a lot, and learned how to keep it all in.
The greatest compliment my dad ever received from his boss, which he repeated many times, was “I never had to worry about Joe, he didn’t need any strokes.”
From what I heard under the crack of the door, Dad could have benefited from more honest discussions with the boss. His job involved some ass-kicking dynamics better shouldered by an organization steeped in transparency, teamwork and open communication.
The code back then didn’t allow for an honest answer to the question: how are you doing? Asking the boss for a regular one-on-one would be like asking him to the prom.
After all, this was the era of Cool Hand Luke’s ironic critique of the utility of dialogue among men:
WHAT WE HAVE HERE IS A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE.
Today the discussion about employee burnout is burning up the Internet. Facebook co-founder Dustin Moscovitz is talking openly about his anxiety attacks. Others are describing how they cry at their desks. My dad, a good man with empathy, would likely have categorized them as “head cases.”
I watched a lot of TV with this man. One time a teaser for a Babe Ruth movie came on
The Babe was growing old….
I looked over and saw tears streaming down his face. Really?
A lifetime’s worth of “Never Explain, Never Complain” left him chock full of emotions he had a hard time controlling as he got older. Don’t even get me started on how he handled Rudy.
At the end of the day, I’m not that interested in what’s going on at Amazon. What fascinates and inspires me is the open dialogue between people about their emotional health in relation to work. It’s liberating and quite possibly transformative.
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