VSEvery year, it’s the same story: at the end of March, I receive messages on my LinkedIn account wishing me a “happy professional birthday”, posted by complete strangers or old acquaintances who I haven’t heard from since… my last professional birthday. Such signs of attention should make me happy, but in truth they sadden me. And this for many reasons.
I know first of all that they come, in the first instance, not from a spontaneous intention, but from a request from the machine. I too, receive from the professional social network invitations to celebrate, in one click, by posting a pre-written message, the professional anniversary of people with whom I have never shared the slightest beginning of gossip, the slightest prospect of a coffee machine, all because they are simply part of my contacts. By the way, I must not really know more than 2% of the members populating this famous network whose activity is reduced to sharing empty phrases such as “Looking forward to exchanging” or “Thank you for the connection”.
As far as I am concerned, I entered the date of entry into my current position completely at random, and it is therefore a fictitious birthday which is celebrated each year. Fortunately, these festivities are reduced to their strict minimum, and no one has ever thought of sending me, at the office, a wedding cake in the shape of a giant mug with crackling candles, because that would be a huge expenditure of resources. for an event that is not one.
Work, total space
Even if I had entered the right date and the celebratory messages fell on the right day, there is something fundamentally infantilizing and ridiculous in this ritual artificially produced by the networking site, accentuated by the fact of wanting to give birth with forceps. milestones of a historicity conceived from scratch. Inevitably, the notion of birthday will refer to this significant moment when you took your first breath: this reinterpretation by the corporate world of a vital symbolism suggests that the company could be the place of a second birth.
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Except for this detail that you no longer exist here for yourself. What we celebrate is your emergence as an organ of a larger body, as evidenced by this message read on LinkedIn: “Happy professional birthday to our Delphine [le prénom a été changé], our face, our ear and our voice of customer service! Delphine is essential to the team. With her vast experience, she is a Source of inspiration for all of us and a solid pillar in providing solutions to challenges. » As LinkedIn professes to its users, “Birthdays are a great opportunity to show you care”.
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