Arbeit Macht Daewoo was a stencil I saw in Warsaw about 14 years ago when I first arrived there to work. I was taken aback by its simplicity and its ferociousness. It was a quick and easy way to compare the office spaces and working environments of some companies like death camps. I recall the Societe Generale fiasco in France too where employees (who could not be fired because they were classed as 'civil servants') were slowly humiliated by their bosses so that they would resign 'voluntarily'. It was a horrible case that soon hit the news headlines with SG being taken to court (eventually losing) for causing numerous suicides amongst its staff. One man (with wife and children) decided to self-immolate at the building he worked at, and for days there was a scorch stain against the side of his office block where he had torched himself. These scenarios will never be forgotten by me. It reminds me of one of the last jobs I had teaching English as a Foreign Language, working at Saudi Aramco (a monster of a company if ever there was one, cf. Daniel Plainview of There Will Be Blood), where the teachers were regularly hounded by staff and 'overseers' to the point where one lad had a nervous breakdown. What did Aramco do? They deported him but not before deducting the costs of his airfare from his salary. Monsters is too good a word for these corporations, and for some of the people who work for them. It was soon after they fired me (for being a good teacher no less) that I stopped working altogether (for others) and started working for the Self...
Arbeit Macht Aramco, Vorsprung Durch Pish...
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