I agree with you there, we are now a Resource instead of a person. No name, just an Employee Number with a large record of what we do at work plus rumors from what the other Employees say about us added to the record. At least it was that way at the law firm I used to work at, HR and Management believed any rumor that was spoken about us and added it to our HR record. Then it showed up on annual reviews. Sort of like having one of those Supermarket Tabloids writing a series of stories on you. "Orion marries Bigfoot", "Orion seen with Elvis at Burger King", "Orion is really a UFO Space Alien".

But anyway, there is a cult mentality and a lot of smoozing with management. The IT Manager had a party at his big house (read Mansion) which was decked up like Bill Gates' mansion with security cameras, talking computers, and all sorts of high tech gadgets. I had scheduled six months in advance to take two weeks off for a trip to Thailand to meet my in-laws over there. The Boss was upset that I missed his party, wanted me to reschedule. I couldn't because my wife had to take vacation too, plus the plane tickets are hard to get and expensive. We had to fly three flights, two of them Chinese Airline flights, to get to Bangkok and back. He was always asking me if I put Java in my programs because at one time I suggested using it for clients who want to access our Intranet but only have Netscape or some other browser and not IE. That flagged me as a Non-Cult member, because members of the Cult are Pro-Microsoft and Anti-Alternatives to Microsoft. So we did everything in ASP, VBScript for the Intranet and some Javascript when VBScript didn't work. I suggested Linux and SAMBA for servers after NT 4.0 Server crashed a lot and needed to be rebooted a dozen times or more a day. It didn't matter that clients won't notice the difference, but because it was not made by Microsoft, my idea was rejected and I was flagged once again in my HR file. I also suggested that we use OOP in VB and create DLL files that can handle common routines that are used over and over again in our VB and ASP programs with reusable objects. The Boss was Anti-OOP and it was rejected again and flagged in my HR file again. Keep in mind that these ideas would have helped things and made our jobs easier, but because of the cult mindset, they were rejected. Finally after four and a half years, they made up what they could about me, took all the HR flags in my file, said I didn't live up to my potential, and let me go. At Five years I would have had an extra vacation week, started earning a pension, and would have gotten more profit sharing. If I would have joined The Cult, I might still have a job there.