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Stranger Things: A Strong Company Culture Bakes In Employee Trust, Dude
Why pizza cashier Argyle is your model worker. Seriously.
Stranger Things Season 4 brings back plenty of familiar heroes — including Dustin, Eleven, Will, Mike, Lucas, and Max — but it also introduces an unlikely one: affable Surfer Boy Pizza cashier Argyle.
Even though Argyle is a bit spacey, to say the least, his strong sense of camaraderie with another Surfer Boy Pizza worker (specifically, one he’s never met before) is a major turning point in the story.
In the season finale, Eleven needs to “piggyback” into Max’s mind to fight the villain, Vecna, but this requires a sensory-deprivation tank. Argyle says he knows a “magical place” that has tons of salt and a tub. Naturally, he takes them to a nearby Surfer Boy franchise.
There, Argyle puts on his Surfer Boy visor and greets his doppelganger with a “surf’s up, my dude.” He receives a “nice shirt, my dude” in return, building immediate rapport. Our heroes gain access to the kitchen so Eleven can save the world.
Both Argyle and the other Surfer Boy cashier dress the same, use a common lingo, and have bought into the Surfer Boy ethos 100%. When your business has a cultural identity and mission statement that employees get behind, team members can relate to each other, feel loyalty to your brand, and can “my dude” each other — or collaborate, anyway — to success.