The key to surviving corporate America is to understand its rhetoric. "Organizational change," for instance, can mean that people are being let go, canned, laid off, or, in a softer sense, "given the opportunity to relocate to corporate headquarters."

This is the story of that exact scenario, where a Fortune 500 company closed shop at a profitable subsidiary in a neighboring state. Each person mulled the idea of exchanging a laid-back, business casual dress environment for a cafeteria, a fitness center and a strangling – by a necktie (corporate attire only, please) and organizational bureaucracy.

All of us – the Indian princess/database administrator/Green Card applicant, the volleyball-loving socially awkward company veteran, the Sean Connery imitator and the metrosexual included – reviewed piles of documentation and sat through 54,781 meetings about moving 100 miles north.

After two months, the men and women in suits arrived to document the documents, proactivate the buzzwords and cage the circus animals (aka tech support). Was the job worth uprooting families and lives? And why exactly do people give up their independence to become company drones?

I pledge allegiance
to the brand
of the corporation that hired me,
and to the bottom line
for which it stands,
one company,
under innumerable upper and middle management,
conflicted,
with paychecks and pink slips for all.