Corporate love.

If you sat and listened to a day's conversation, what would you hear? Compliments, maybe; sincere or otherwise. Relationship troubles - and boasts. Plans being forged and broken. Politics. Slights against a person's character, sometimes swiftly followed by an uneasy justification. Declarations of love for a human or a thing or a concept. Descriptions of the weather. Laughter. All of these; none of them.

One thing, at least, is absolutely guaranteed. You'd almost certainly hear complaints - mainly, I contest, complaints about work. People who think they're not valued enough; people who can't stand the sheer monotony of it anymore. People who abhor their superiors - people who want to be their superiors, even if the outlook isn't good. People who want longer breaks, shorter hours, better customers, a comfier uniform, more challenges, a company car, staff discount, greater satisfaction, more holidays, and/or new co-workers. Of course, the most common complaints revolve more closely around money. Why aren't we being paid more? Don't I deserve more than this? Should be paid a King's ransom with the type of work I do.

On the face of it, business doesn't love us. I beg to differ.

Without money, any company would die. Money pumps around the vast, oddly-shaped body of every facet of the business which it keeps alive; money defends it against attack, and money makes it stronger. As any parent or lover might, corporations bleed for us. It hurts, and the blood might be desperately needed elsewhere, but they bleed for us all the same.

Isn't that what love is about? We need each other, us and The Corporation. We support each other, and empower each other. We fight, we curse each other and we blame everything on each other, but in the end it doesn't matter. It would still bleed for us; can we say the same? Unless forced, how many of us would willingly sacrifice that which is so important to us for the corporation under which we slave - our time?

We ruffle our feathers. We're not working for charity. Someone's got to making a living and pay for food and frivolities around here. We need our wages. We need our wants to be fulfilled. It knows this, and it provides for us, even though it knows there's really nothing it can do to make us sacrifice a second of our time back. Unconditional, almost; your money is your manna, and it's guaranteed monthly if you keep up your side of the bargain.

Some might say that it doesn't bleed enough for us; that it gives just enough for sustenance, and sometimes not even that. But you're not that kind of lover, are you?