[smif]

Your definition of loyalty sounds like it's more loyalty to yourself/your own values or an idealized/rose-tinted view of the company from the past rather than loyalty to what the company is at the present time, which is always a moving target of course.

I interpreted their notion of loyalty as like a sort of trust that things will work out in the end, "maybe this is just a rough patch", etc.

Re: neglect, I think there's a more subtle gradient there. Lets say your company decided to implement a dumbass policy X, and you rail against it, but since it's highly popular it's like you're pissing against the wind. So you kind of resign yourself to it's inevitability and make a long bet that it's going to fail. This is in the hopes of a brighter future where it has already failed and been replaced with something better. You might even make decisions during this time that set you up to be better positioned for when it does eventually fail. This is a kind of negative semi-passivity, but it's only negative in the sense that you're betting against something that you think is a bad idea and you're trying to improve your position within that potential better future after the bad thing is gone.

That's not strictly the same thing as sabotage which would require malicious actions on your part to undermine the effort. You don't even need to hope that it fails, you can just make impartial/rational decisions to prepare for it's eventual downfall without being heavily emotionally invested in that same downfall. And on top of that, you could rationalize all of that as setting the company up for future success after it gets through this rough patch, so it's not all about self-interest.

E: There's a famous chess saying that comes to mind, "never interrupt your opponent while they are making a mistake". Not sure about it's applicability here, but it feels like a similar kind of mindset.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

I think loyalty in this case would be better described as tolerance.

I hate Cox Cable. Seriously, I fucking hate them with all the vitriol I can muster. Even just last week I called bitching about the fact that I'm paying $170/month for an internet connection that hasn't stayed up for more than an hour over the past 3 weeks (I'm paying for extra bandwidth to be able to backup data).

But I've been with them since the 90's because there are no viable alternatives and every time I call AT&T they refuse to tell me which areas they serve fiber in. years ago I was once told by an agent that they have an agreement with Cox that they confirm or deny given a specific address but they cannot tell callers which area they have fiber in.

So I tolerate them because the alternative is clearly worse.

That's not loyalty, that's lockin. I'd absolutely drop them in a heartbeat if the alternative was reasonable close in performance.

[jzb]

Tolerance is a good way to look at it. +1