(anono this week) It's got to be bad... Think of all the brown nosing that goes on, the reverence and deference to seniority and their opinions. The quiet solemn atmosphere they open each meeting with prayer and hymns, so of course the direction are expected to be digested as divine. I don't see how an employee could have a dissenting opinion or question a policy? Then there is the even more solemn superior corporate offices of the upper-upper hierarchy separate from the riff raft in the COB. It's very quiet there, it resemble a mausoleum.
My job can be irritating and we have brownnosers, yes men, and directions from my management at work are quite often not thought through extensively. But we have the luxury to pass it off as some managers opinion, and don't have to think of it as divine rule from heaven. We work in open style structure and everyone is rather accessible. Our managers have humble offices, It's not a grave yard!
But the COB is a lifestyle, religion, and job all wrapped up in one. How do they keep their testimonies?
Shortly after I graduated from high school, I got a job working in the historical department in the COB. My boss was the nicest person to work for, and no other supervisor or manager since then has come close to how decent my boss was to us. Leonard J Arrington would come into our little area all the time, happy and cheerful and would go to our boss's office and talk for an hour or two with him. It never failed, that each time afterwards, My boss's manager would come storming in, shut the door of my boss's office and yell at him. I suspect that Arrington was sharing very interesting information with my boss and that he knew quite a bit of the truth. One day, our boss said that we needed a break and he took us (5 or 6 of us) to the Granite Vault in Little Cottonwood Canyon. I remember it being immense inside and lots of papers, and even the death masks of JS and HS, but alas: no sword of Laban, no gold plates, like I thought there was going to be. Not even a gold filing or two. I worked in the COB for 3 years and we received tons of paperwork from all over the world. It was an interesting place to work. Back in that day we weren't required to hold a temple recommend nor was tithing automatically deducted from our paychecks.
There was a woman who used to be the admin assistant where I work whose previous job was at the church office building. She quit because she experienced quite a bit of sexual harassment and her supervisors refused to do anything to stop it.
I'm not sure about tithing, but I don't think it is deducted; I had heard that you do have to have a recommend though. I'd believe it that his portrait was taken down. The powers that be ordered him not to publish his book, but he did anyway. There were tons of historical documents in his area; the area was kept at a pretty cool temperature in an effort to keep the documents and papers preserved. Arrington was really nice; always cheerful around us.
Arrington sounds like a genuinely warm human being besides being an honest historian.
Well to have a recommend indicates one is a full tithing payer, so that covers both subjects I suppose.
Funny there was a time as a young adult I obeyed all the temple requirements but I never once had any desire to have or hold a temple recommend. I think I dodged a bullet with that one.
My parents temple garments they wore when I was growing up was all the disincentive I needed to not want to go there. They were the silliest looking one piece underwear garments I have ever seen. And synthetic material too. They didn't wear very well either, and they were so expensive!
My brother works in the Bishop's Storehouse department (if that's even what it's called); anyway, the only thing he's ever said about it is that the Church™ helps people, but "expects them to do at least a little something in return."
That's doesn't really describe working in the COB, but unless my TBM bro' resigns I doubt he'll ever say anything but wonderful things about it. I also wonder if, when he retires, they try to get HIM to do the same job as a "senior missionary."
perhaps the COB is not so bad? I drove past it last night on my way home from Salt Lake. It just looks so big, so dark, so scary! And I sometimes see the men come out at 4:00pm (when their shift ends) all dressed like men-in-black fbi agents. They ride the bus up north into Davis county.
There is one of my cousins who told me that when her grandma worked there (1960s) the bretheren use to call all the female employees "the girls." It was go tell the girls to do this, do that. Fetch this, fetch that. It was a very chauvinistic place.