Is your company a company, or is your company a family?

The question has a number of rather pertinent ramifications. It’s good to have an answer.

If your company is a family, then when you invade my workspace for a family activity, preventing me from getting any work done and thereby causing me to miss deadlines and slip schedules, well, that’s okay. We’re family. We’ll deal. Pass the cake.

If, on the other hand, your company is a company, then when you invade my workspace for a family activity — preventing me from getting any work done and thereby causing me to miss deadlines and slip schedules — it’s on me to make up the time. Your actions have become my problems, which is ample justification for me to be more than a little peeved.

So is your company a company, or is your company a family?

If your company is like most companies, it’s both — you get to do what you want, and I get screwed with no right to be angry about it.

Here’s a protip about ‘most companies’ — people good enough to get jobs elsewhere… do.