Loyalty Isn't Real

It's fake. The end.

Hi friends! I’m taking a break this month. While I’m away, I’m re-publishing some of my favorite pieces from the Boss Barista archives, which will probably be new to many, if not most, subscribers—including today’s piece, which looks at loyalty in the workplace, and explores how it’s a fake concept that only serves employers, not employees.

While I’m gone, it’d be great if you considered becoming a paid subscriber to Boss Barista. One of the reasons I decided to take a break—beyond the fact that we all deserve time off—is that this publication is not economically sustainable for me as of yet.

One day, I’d like that to change. The best way for that to happen is if you become a paid subscriber. Thank you for all of your support:

This article was originally published on June 21, 2019.

Why do we prize loyalty at work? It doesn’t make us any better at our jobs.

One thing workers are cautioned about when applying for a new job is how long they’ve stayed in previous roles. A history of frequent job changes is widely viewed as a red flag, a cause for concern. Their very loyalty is called into question.

Loyalty is a funny thing. It’s not a trait that makes anyone inherently better at their job—a person isn’t better at waiting tables or serving coffee if they’re loyal. Yet, the perception of loyalty is often used as a metric for determining if someone is hirable.

If being loyal is prized, disloyalty is rejected. People are admonished when their resumes reflect too many jumps. Workers who are seen as disloyal are not only viewed as untrustworthy by hiring managers and recruiters, but assumed to be bad at their jobs, too.

Let’s break this myth.

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People leave jobs for all kinds of reasons, from the practical to the flippant. My guess is that, removing extenuating circumstances like a move or other big life change, most people resign for three main reasons:

1. They receive a better opportunity elsewhere that their current employer can’t meet.

2. They feel physically or emotionally unsafe at work.

3. Their work conditions are unstable. This is the most ambiguous, but it encompasses feeling disrespected, or undermined, or talked down to. There’s some form of instability in leadership that makes work feel unsteady.

Loyalty is one of those traits that can apply to both our professional and personal lives. In either context, loyalty is seen as a positive—it’s good to be committed to your friends and it’s good to be committed to your workplace. However, loyalty at work is distinct because of the way it intersects with power: It functions differently between two equal actors versus between a boss and an employee.

In the workplace, loyalty serves as a safety net for companies, and an ambient threat for workers. An employer can push the importance of loyalty on their employees as a way to safeguard existing power structures; conversely, an employee who can’t work under the leadership of a particular boss can easily be portrayed as disloyal. The actions of the employer go unquestioned, and the reputation of the employee can be damaged, sometimes irrevocably.

Loyalty is a great escape hatch for ineffective bosses. It allows leaders to write off any of their own missteps and blame workers for negative outcomes and employee turnover. Instead of examining their own shortcomings, the concept of loyalty allows those in power to say, “That person was disloyal,” and move on.

Where this becomes especially dangerous is in loyalty’s potential to obscure discriminatory practices. The people who are deemed loyal workers are those who stay at their jobs, and those who leave aren’t often given much consideration. What loyalty allows folks to miss is that certain people might leave jobs more often than others because they feel unsafe or are routinely marginalized at work.

Moreover, the question of loyalty often falls disproportionately on marginalized people. Women and people of color already get saddled with “busywork,” or the behind-the-scenes work that elevates others but rarely brings recognition to themselves. When marginalized people leave jobs to pursue better opportunities, they are often written off for being disloyal.

Likewise, marginalized people might be forced into situations they feel uncomfortable in because loyalty is such a strong motivator. When someone is deemed disloyal, it’s meant as a character flaw. You call someone disloyal when you mean to hurt them or paint them in a negative light. The threat of being seen as disloyal is so strong that many people are more likely to tolerate unfair and unkind situations than speak out. Nobody wants to be seen as disloyal.

Before I wrote this article, I did a Google Image search on the word “loyal.” Along with highly stylized banners that look like sad replacements for the majestic landscapes and sunsets I associate with motivational posters, what popped up were a lot of strange quotes about loyalty being absolute. Loyalty is “black and white” and given to others “completely.” Most of the quotes reduce loyalty into a binary expression of care that requires no reciprocity. In fact, demanding anything in return is seen as a disingenuous form of loyalty.

This is certainly true in the workplace. Loyalty never works from the top down—only from the bottom up. The burden of showing loyalty comes from the least powerful actors in a business, and it is not demanded of those in power. We never say, “This business owner was disloyal to his staff.” We have no concept of what that could even mean.

If you’re still unconvinced, think of businesses with very low turnover rates. Did they somehow attract the only loyal people in a given industry? No—instead of wielding loyalty as a cudgel, these businesses have figured something else out: how to keep people happy.

Loyalty is a ubiquitous virtue. It’s something we view so positively and starkly that we ignore what its absence can tell us. Loyalty obscures Bad Boss Behavior (a term I do plan on trademarking, thank you very much), harms marginalized people, and reinforces the status quo. It’s not a real metric of anything. Stop demanding it.