When business is personal: Authenticity as a false ideal of corporate culture

Comment published on New York Times blog in response to opinion essay by Pamela Paul, “Do not bring your whole self to work,” September 25, 2022:

America is a land where business is personal, and everyone wants to be authentic, and to manage work and business relationships with intimacy (as a resource of power). American professionals are not trained to think in traditional 'rational' terms, but instead to deploy 'emotional intelligence'. Customer service reps understand how you feel, at least enough to say they do, but few people know how to infer one possible fact from another (which is the meaning of 'reason'). Having lived and done business in France, what a contrast I found! Instead of being intimate with you, business people are very polite, and if you have a practical problem that needs a solution, and not just a display of empathy, many people actually know how to think it through. Is this because they distinguish polite ('vous') and familiar ('tu') address, with the result that a private/public distinction remains, and it is insulting if someone is intimate with you whom you don't well know? American culture for decades has been replacing politics with therapy. It is understandable that companies would manage consumers this way, apparently finding this more efficient, at the cost of making business telephone calls to many of us merely annoying. In the case of offices and workers, company bosses may want to know all about you since they think they own you. Identity political speech codes now protect everyone from being offended. But is the kindergarten model truly the most productive?