There’s a particular kind of email that arrives at 3:12 a.m., when I’m asleep and at my most vulnerable. It’s from my bank, which insists on addressing me like a Victorian suitor: “Mr Shaw, we have important news about your credit score.”
I imagine the bank leaning over my bedside, shaking me awake.
“MR SHAW … MR SHAW … something’s happened.”
Bleary-eyed, I brace myself. Identity theft? Fraud? A long-lost inheritance?
No. My credit score is up three points. Three whole points. A shift so minuscule it could be caused by nothing more than the gravitational pull of a passing pigeon.
And yet they send a message every single day, as if my credit score is a fragile preemie they’re keeping alive in an incubator. God forbid you buy a car. Then the messages multiply like fruit flies. “New activity detected!” they warn, as if you didn’t know that you were the one who bought a Honda CR-V and not a cartel laundering money through a dealership in Akron. It’s a whole industry built on telling you things you already know. Except louder.
Then there are the Employee Assistance Programs. Every company claims to have one, printed in a cheerful PDF with stock photos of improbably diverse people smiling at clipboards. They’re always “robust,” “comprehensive,” and “here for you,” by which they mean: Three complimentary counseling sessions … every other year … with a social work intern only available on Tuesdays … between 2:00 and 2:30 a.m.
It’s the corporate version of a parent saying, “We support your dreams,” while handing you $7.53 and a bus schedule from 1998.
I once tried to schedule one of these sessions, and I swear the process had the same energy as trying to book a tee time at Augusta National. “We’re sorry, the calendar is full until the next fiscal quarter,” the intern told me, chewing what sounded like homework. “But we do have an opening on Leap Day at half past midnight, provided Mercury isn’t in retrograde.”
I hung up thinking: This is not an assistance program. This is a scavenger hunt. But they get to brag about it at the All-Hands meeting like they’ve personally cured loneliness.
Fast-food restaurants do the same thing with their charity programs. You’re standing there, just trying to buy a taco — one taco, a humble thing — when the cashier, who hasn’t blinked since you walked in, asks, “Would you like to round up your order to support our children’s literacy foundation?”
Ah yes, the foundation. The one whose website shows glossy photos of happy children reading books, while the annual financial report shows that 95% of donations went to “administrative overhead,” which is corporate code for someone leased a boat.
Really, the restaurant is getting a tax write-off on money I supplied, which I believe is the economic equivalent of being pickpocketed and commended for my generosity. But they beam about it. They act like they invented charity. Meanwhile, somewhere, an actual child is squinting at a book printed in 1973.
Everywhere you go, companies are trying to convince you they’re changing the world, that your life is measurably better because they exist. They post on LinkedIn about “empowerment” and “transformation” and “our mission to elevate the human experience,” while providing benefits that could barely elevate a houseplant.
Bright packaging around an empty box. Movement without meaning. A big pile of nothing.
And I can’t help thinking: where are the companies actually doing good? The ones who fix things instead of diagnosing them? The ones who don’t brag about their kindness like it’s a new product launch? The ones who don’t need twelve cents from my taco to become decent?
Because I’d give those companies all my extra taco bucks. Even the nickels. Hell, I’d even let them email me at 3:12 a.m. As long as it meant something.