[John_KZ]

Hostile workplace culture is a thing everywhere. You don't have to and you shouldn't have to be friends with all your colleagues. Loneliness is not a problem that can or should be solved at work. You should make sure nobody is marginallized but trying to make people feel at home while they're not is deceptive, it really complicates simple things, and it's not good for anyone.

The article says we should deceive employees into thinking we're all a family so we can make more money out of them. As far as I know there's a lot of effort in that direction by the american industry (ie forcing wallmart employees to do a humiliating group dance/song at the start of their shifts).

However there's one thing the author forgets: If you actually create strong relationships in your office, you run into the danger of them unionizing! Uh-oh! Time to do a U-turn. What if your workers demand higher wages collectively? What if they protest the firing of one of their friends? So I guess now their goal becomes "how to make people think they're in good company while making sure they're not". Fortunately it's rather hard to trick people into this.