Cummins has a reliable people story format.
Find a bright young engineer in Columbus. Minorities preferred. Put their job title in bold, preferably with the word emissions somewhere in the middle. Strap them to phrases like purpose, impact, community and growth. Then present the whole thing as proof that life inside a serial offender is one long wholesome arc of fulfilment.
This week the template lands on Taylor M, Senior Combustion, Performance and Emissions Engineer. On the surface it is a warm profile. She arrives hoping to be stretched and challenged, finds meaning, discovers community, steps into leadership, starts a master#s at Purdue. By the end she is aligned with the mission of powering a more prosperous world and advising others to be curious and ask questions.
None of that is inherently objectionable. What matters is what the company is doing in the background while Taylor is being turned into content.
Lunch Laid Out In Corporate Tranquillit
You can see the setup even if the photo never loads.
Her pre interview Lunch is already laid out on her desk. The scene pre staged so she looks busy but not stressed. Two empty little boxes parked nearby, just conspicuous enough to feel like props. Taylor is eating off the special menu today.
Pea and ham soup on the regular menu, pea and diazepam soup for the oblivious Taylor. Dessert? The Life at the Company house special Xanax Snax.
By the time Comms sit down, everything looks calm and composed. Any hint of sedative drool at the corner of her mouth is gone, some some mopped by makeup, the rest quietly cropped out later by a graphic editor who knows their real job is to trim away anything that looks human, messy or tired.
It is all metaphor of course. Nobody needs to spike anything in real life. The article itself is the sedative. A few lines about purpose, a few about community, a few about safe, reliable products, and the whole scene takes on that soft, medicated glow.
Escaping the tedium for an afternoon of flattery, staged lunch and gentle questions is almost worth the sedation itself.
Community As Corporate Anaesthetic
The copy leans hard on the people around her.
Her teammates care about doing things the right way. There is pride in the work. Integrity. Support when things get demanding. A culture that helps you believe you can take on anything. You are surrounded by people who want to help you succeed. You want to give your best every day.
Again, these statements might be true at team level. Many engineers really do care about doing the right thing. The problem is the way Cummins uses that care as an anaesthetic.
Community becomes something you pour over the history to numb the taste. It is hard to dwell on enforcement actions and emissions cheating when every paragraph is busy assuring you that the people on the floor are kind and supportive. In this framing, any criticism of the company magically reads as an attack on Taylor and her mates, not on the board that actually makes the calls.
Community is real. In this piece it is also weaponised. It certainly isn’t about Taylor, it’s about how GREAT Cummins is.
Emissions With The Edges Filed Off
Taylor’s job title includes the word emissions. That is where the bravery ends.
We are told she handles truck testing prep, keeps things safe and ready for the field, troubleshoots issues, validates systems, moves projects along. We are not told what happens when those systems fail outside the neat perimeter of the test facility. We are not told how many millions Cummins has already spent calming regulators or how often emissions data has needed a quiet rethink.
The article treats emissions like a neutral technical challenge instead of a dirty word with legal history attached. It is combustion without consequences. Performance without context. A tailpipe without a street.
When she says she wants her work to deliver safe, reliable products, the line lands as intended to outsiders. A joke to insiders. It sounds wholesome. It only sounds that way because the company has meticulously removed every detail that might make a reader ask safe and reliable for whom.
Tuition, Titles And Golden Handcuffs
One of the centrepieces of the story is the Tuition Assistance Programme.
Taylor is using it to get a mechanical engineering masters at Purdue. Rumsey’s old stomping ground. The school for teaching people to detach from morals. WJ Cummins invests in you. You feel supported as a person with goals, dreams and potential. Leaders encourage you. Mentors guide you. You expand your skills, confidence and vision.
What does not get mentioned is how neatly that investment doubles as a restraint. Once the company has helped pay for your degree and tied your professional growth to its internal ladder, it becomes harder to walk away, especially if your whole public identity within your field is now wrapped in Life at the Company hagiography.
It is clever. Help people learn. Make sure the paths to that learning run straight through you. Put the story on the website so anyone thinking of leaving has to drag their younger self off the corporate homepage first.
Support on paper. Handcuffs in practice.
ERGs As Early Career Sedation
Early in her time at Cummins, Taylor sets up the Cummins Next Generation Employee Resource Group. In the official story it becomes a powerful community for early career employees and one of the most rewarding parts of her career.
Of course it feels rewarding. When you are in your twenties, working in combustion and emissions for a company with a regulatory record, it helps to have a circle of people your own age saying the right words back to you. Purpose. Passion. Future. Prosperous world. You can convince each other that you are bending the giant the right way.
There is nothing wrong with people building support systems at work. The problem comes when those groups are quietly repurposed as shock absorbers. Give the early career crowd a sandbox where they can feel engaged and empowered, while the grown-ups keep making the same decisions upstairs.
It is cheaper than fixing the underlying problem. It also produces great, if not laughably contorted, photos for the website. It is always a pretty young woman, never a heavy set mid 50s woman who goes by Betty.
The Customer Sees The Glow, Not The Smoke
By the end of the piece, Taylor’s passion, purpose and potential are all in alignment. She has learned which parts of engineering inspire her most. She loves leading, supporting and lifting others up. She is heading in that direction. Everything is expanding.
For those outside Cummins, the message is simple. Send us your brightest graduates. We will give them community, tuition support, challenging work, a chance to lead, and the occasional people story. Look how serene they are. Look how grateful they sound. Look how much they talk about integrity.
The customer never sees what was cropped out. The doubt. The boredom. The gap between the mission statements and the settlements. The reality of working on combustion and emissions for a company that has spent years insisting that the fumes are fine.
Inside the frame, lunch is laid out, pea and diazepam soup steaming gently, Xanax Snax cleared away, chin wiped clean. Outside the frame the air is still thick with what Cummins actually sells.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project.