#27 - Corporate Anthropology

So I thought I’d made up the term in the title of this week’s newsletter, but nope: turns out corporate anthropology is a real thing. It’s a field that’s been around since the 80’s, and in a nutshell it’s a way to analyze business processes and cultures using sociological frameworks. So let me preface this by saying I’m not a sociologist.

I’m a resume writer.

Having this job is kind of like having a peephole into the corporate sphere. At my leisure, I can learn from my clients about how teams are structured, who’s getting laid off, what one person can be reasonably expected to do as a sole contributor, and who has the best idea of what a company actually DOES.

I’ve learned that the bigger the company and the higher up the leadership chart you go, the less likely your goals are tied to what your customers actually want.

I’ve learned that it takes an awful lot to convince a team that they way they’ve been doing something can be done better, faster, and cheaper.

I’ve learned the differences between “Customer Success”, “Customer Experience”, “Customer Support”, and “Customer Service”. Mostly.

I’ve learned how to distinguish between someone who works in a creative field and an actual creative thinker.

I’ve learned what a Scrum Event is, and that Six Sigma wasn’t made up for an episode of “30 Rock”.

I’ve learned that there are many, many people who starred in plays, drew pictures, made movies, and wrote music when they were young who found an analogue for the joy they felt in a 9-5 role, and now they do those same things for money.

And I’ve learned that if someone asked me tomorrow to come work for their start-up as Head of Corporate Storytelling, or Creative Brand Director, or Marketing Communications Lead, if I couldn’t take my schedule into my own hands and protect my own time, then I would say “no”.

Too Many Losing Heroines Day at Anime Yankii

Recent Gigs

Since my last update, I have provided additional voices for the following projects:

• I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out my Level, Season 2 Episodes 4, 5 & 8

• The Shiunji Family Children, Episode 5

• Fire Force, Season 3 Episode 6

Featured Role: Kotoha Tachibana, Wind Breaker

This spring I had the privilege of reprising my role as 2024’s best girl Kotoha Tachibana. We’re back in Makochi City after an all-out brawl with the punks at Keel, our boy Sakura is sick with the flu, and he’s too stubborn to ask for someone to take care of him. And when the boys can’t convince him to accept a helping hand, a woman comes along to force a spoon in his mouth and a hiepita on his forehead.

I’m in LOVE with this scene in episode 17. At a surface level, Kotoha slaps Sakura down using words we’ve heard before, in this show and in other shonen anime - depend on your friends, no man is an island, we’re stronger together. But Kotoha is a community-builder, and her words don’t just address Sakura’s current situation as an invalid but his entire way of life.

Sole resident of the saddest apartment known to man, Sakura doesn’t appear to have dishware, any way of cooking or storing food, furniture, or even a set of curtains to keep out the street light at night. Kotoha makes light of this once she’s inside, but gets a little irritated when Sakura insists he can take care of himself and declares that he does not have the means or the knowledge. He can’t make the congee she prepared. When he’s sick, he can’t even walk down the street to get medicine. And this lack isn’t a personal failure, but his refusal to delegate and create a support system is.

It’s so wild to see a show aimed at young boys not only encouraging honesty and vulnerability, but collective care, and it’s refreshing.

Kotoha doesn’t show up too much this season. But if you’re watching Wind Breaker Season 2, you’re not here for me — a new challenger’s appeared on the scene.

Performance of the Week

Every queer anime fan I know has been on tenterhooks waiting for this character to make his debut (official pronouns are he/him, but it’s purposely ambiguous in the J). One of the “Four Kings” of Bofurin, Tsubaki presented an opportunity for a talented nonbinary actor to flex their muscles - one Kiba Walker has seized and embraced.

If I were to sum up Tsubaki in a word, it would be “fearless”. This is a person who does what they want, when they want it, how they want to, because they’ve lived the alternative and it SUCKS. Walker’s grounded performance perfectly captures Tsubaki’s ease, openness, and impact, effectively divorcing the character from a legion of stereotypes that have come before and letting him speak for himself.

Happy Pride, y’all.

Consume!

If anyone’s been wondering why I’ve begun saying “throw me in the bog” on the regular, it’s because of this podcast.

Hosted by illustrators Hannah Hillam and Kaveh Taherian, “500 Open Tabs” distinguishes itself from other “topic of the week” series by not taking itself too seriously, or seriously at all, or WAY too seriously depending on the day. Kaveh and Hannah embrace chaos and bring the audience wherever their fancies lead, and although there is some connective tissue between the range of topics covered — historical grudge matches, foreign policy blunders, unsung artists, and Richard Nixon, to name a few — the only true constants are 1) you’ll learn something new, and 2) Hannah and Kaveh will crack each other up to the point where they have a hard time continuing with the show.

It’s like hanging out with smart, talented friends who thinking learning things together is the most fun you can have. And isn’t that nice?

Strategic Roadmap

Becoming a resume writer has been the number-one contributor to my confidence talking to other people, understanding the world, and writing about subjects I’m unfamiliar with. In the six years since I began this side hustle, I’ve learned what questions to ask people after “what do you do for a living”, drawn connections between ways of thinking and the types of jobs people are likely to pursue, and gained at least a baseline understanding of how corporations — the places where most people spend the majority of their time — grow and crumble.

It’s never been something I could rely on full-time, but it’s offered me a kind of freedom I’ve spent my whole life pursuing. A kind of freedom I wish everyone who needed it could have, to travel at will, to take time for personal projects, to adjust my workflow if I’m sick or out of sorts.

I’m not better or worse than anyone for choosing this lifestyle, for prioritizing work that I connect with over a set of systems that make it marginally easier to make long-term plans. I’m just a person who wilts when every day starts to look the same, and who was praised early on for having a unique way of seeing the world.

But I do wonder how things would have gone if I’d known just HOW MANY jobs there are, if those weird aptitude tests I took in high school went beyond standard career paths and dug into the “why” and “how” of potential paths, if the stories I consumed set in corporate environments weren’t centered on how miserable a time everyone was having and instead explored what it would look like if everyone cared about their work.

Because I’ve also learned that it’s not as cut-and-dry as “office bad, art good”, that “doing work that matters” and “making a difference” can mean wildly different things to different people, and that there’s no one solution to any workplace obstacle. Just like there’s no one way to live your life.

I’ve grown comfortable with ambiguity, and wary of absolutes. At least, most of the time.

Hollis Beck is a performer and writer who crafts narratives about queer identity, found families, and people who try very hard. More information can be found on her website.