When I was in high school, I read about sea lampreys, eel-like fish that attach themselves to healthy fish and suck their lives right out of them.

 

It occurred to me a couple weeks ago that sea lampreys’ modus operandi parallels  today’s corporate “job creators,”  who enlist healthy people to bolster their financial empires while sucking their lives out of them. 

Sea lampreys and the vast majority of today’s high-profile “job creators” are parasitic predators. They attach themselves to viable hosts and proceed to “take them down” without conscience  and without consequences to their enterprises because too many politicians are beholden to their deep pockets and “donations” (which most countries correctly classify as bribes and “pay to play”).

 

In symbiotic relationships — as opposed to parasitic, predatory relationships — two individuals of the same (or different) species act in unison while helping each other survive. They perform beneficial services that help both survive without harming each other.

 

One example of a commonly seen symbiotic relationship among different species are the birds that accompany elephants and rhinoceroses to eat the ticks off their backs, the detritus between their teeth, and the nutritional elements in their dung.  Both species benefit from the others’ ministrations and interactions.

 

Whales and sharks also have symbiotic “buddies” who minister to each other’s needs.

 

A man and his hunting dog, and cats performing mouse and rat duty around farmers’ granaries, are additional examples of symbiotic relationships.

 

In sharp contrast, sea lampreys attach themselves to healthy fish with disk-like, suctioning mouths filled with sharp rasps that puncture and serrate over time like teeth. Their mouths bore holes into their hosts and suck out the fluids and tissues that keep them alive.  These “relationships” are  one-sided and ultimately fatal to the host.

 

Try as they might to cast themselves in glorified light as “job creators,” most corporations that employ a lot of people (so many that they become nameless, faceless numbers) become sociopathic over time, more interested in profits and their shareholders’ happiness than in the health and wellbeing of the worker bees who sustain them.

 

They avoid paying health care costs by working their employees just long enough to avoid calling them full-timers; they rarely offer set working schedules so their employees can find additional work to help sustain them, and they fight tooth and nail to keep the minimum wage so skimpy that their employees are forced to  accept governmental assistance to keep their heads above water.

 

In other words, they care as much about their employees’ wellbeing, longevity, and sustainability as sea lampreys care about the beings that sustain their lives.

As long as they’re getting what they want, the damage to their hosts are never taken into consideration. As their worker bees fall away, drained or dying, there are plenty more fish to latch onto to keep going.

So, I say fie on these wolves in sheep’s clothing. I call them what they are: Sea Lampreys.  Chief Fraud Officers (CFOs), Chief Injury Officers (CIOs), Chief  Exploitation Officers (CEOs), Presidents and Vice Presidents of Perfidy.

 

Prove me wrong.  There are a few who have but sadly, they’re distinctly in the minority. (Nick Hanauer, Dan Price, a few others. Bill Gates started out as that kind of guy. Microsoft secretaries’ salaries were among the highest in the nation at the beginning of Microsoft’s ascension. I don’t know their status today. Mostly men came out of Microsoft as high-profile millionaires.)

 

As Dan Price and others have proven, when you pay employees adequately, they stick around, work hard and live lives that don’t keep them in a constant state of anxiety.

 

Everyone who works full time (whether at one job or several) should be earning enough to live a life that doesn’t revolve around fearing a setback that will put them on the skids again.  Peoples lives (no matter their abilities or disabilities) are every bit as valuable and worthy of consideration and compassion as the people living in ivory towers.  (THEY may not believe this, but it’s true.)

 

When we discount what others do for us, we’re like sea lampreys. It’s no fun to admit that, but it’s true.  We need to sustain the sustainers and shake off the sociopathic human bloodsuckers who don’t seem to know anything better than how to consume others’ lives and labor.

 

I work for myself because no one owns my time, or me. What I give, I choose to give. And it benefits me and whoever I invest my time serving.  I don’t serve sea lampreys. I serve people who value their helpmates in business and at home.

 

All others need not apply.