Throwback Thursday: a truth about Corporate America

Lisbon: And you know what’s weird about these guys? None of them seem to give a damn. A colleague of theirs falls out of the sky and they seem OK with it. Is that guilt or indifference?

Jane: Corporate brainwashing. Turns them into robots. Grief isn’t productive, and that’s all.

Lisbon: I don’t buy that. People make up their own minds. You can’t brainwash them.

Jane: Sure you can. That’s what these corporate retreats are all about. It’s primitive brainwashing via group suffering. It’s like office karaoke or fraternity hazing.

Lisbon: How so?

Jane: When the individual is humiliated, their perceived value of the group is raised.

Lisbon: I went on a retreat when I got promoted to head of the unit. I mean, I wasn’t humiliated. I wasn’t brainwashed.

Jane: So you say.

- Patrick Jane to Teresa Lisbon, The Mentalist, written by Bruno Heller.

Originally published June 11, 2009