It’s really terrible to be there on the outside, you want me to say looking in, but its living IN that is the reality. For example (an easy example to start with) there’s one of you in front of me, talking, trying to you know like believe in something or more likely just live the role they’ve been PAID to[1]. And yes its true they expect me to respond so I can do it right so yeah its easy to say the things that are needed and then, ha! they walk away satisfied…okay so lets for a second pretend that this sentiment is true of everyone. Okay so, then extrapolating, the whole world is…
I took up a pen and it was unlidded and fed by ink but not dried yet and it hasn’t let me down yet so its love I feel now for this persistent little pen that creams ink out its tight spot at all hours, the beautiful thing it is. It’s still not owned. The firm will buy more pens.
You had a dream in which you lived? So you are actually making a life outside of this place? AND you are going to tell me about it? Okay. It’s lovely and heartbreaking your things as they are; a new car (the best ever!); a holiday (praise god!); a baby (one day!); I’m getting out of here to start X (wonderful!).
The patterns on the wall I have memorised. If by patterns you mean hollow motivational slang, and if by memorised you mean have taken to be the implicit insulting of my intellect, then yeah, memorised, sir.
Company Culture: the allusion of admirable circumstance under the cloud of cost benefit analysis.
The women are still things. Skirts, shoes, hair and make up. Even the unattractive ones who try to assert equality slash professionalism know they aren’t exempt. The new thing is to be unattractive and steadfast, surly, revel in your ugliness young managers for we fear no threat from you on so many levels:
Level 1. You are probably not going to have children any time soon (corporate benefit)
Level 2. You will not distract your co-workers.
Level 3 The men will take you seriously (no cause for distraction)
Level 4. You get to see the pretty girls promoted ahead of you and/or they are left alone to be vacuous beauties that (you remember back to when you were growing up) have always had it kind of good and sweet and more fun than you could imagine, and, lets face it your imagination, poor stuck-in-the-clutches-of-the-rest-of-the-disgusting-world girl you have created is taking over…and you think ‘how unfair’ without knowing the reality and instead being resentful and spiteful and exacting your revenge on those damned pretty girls. Late at night when you remember you are a female you feel sick and bad because there is no more mirrors and you know deep down that you’ve just played along again in the male world of handshakes and beer and appreciating cleavage (in your head: do I have good cleavage?).
Person: Walk away. Stop those steps towards the desk. Look at the sky, fall in love with the day.
Worker: I am already in love with the day.
Person: No. There are better things to do. You don’t need to do this.
Worker: I’ll have a coffee and then it will be 10am
Person: This day is too precious to waste…this life
Worker: I can’t believe they pay me $200 a day for this
Person: I am not worth this
Worker: Hello, hello, hello (wow, such strange and nice people! The phone rang)
Person: What clichés, yeah right ‘Good mourning‘. Please stop asking me what I’m, doing…I’m making a coffee. Your fascination makes me sick, okay?
Worker: (laughs/grunt laughs/ fake laughs or its a real laugh).
You were told that you had something important to do. You did that important thing! There were smiles and the other paid things said ‘well done’ type things and that was one week or month or so. There was a budget you didn’t adhere to. The investors were not happy, you affected their pocket! Now what happened is you are fucked and useless and worthless (in a monetary sense) and yet you felt inside that you are actually bad and a failure and then, like a breathe or in a Namaste yoga way you remembered that you can turn off your computer (self) and walk away into the night and see your friends and maybe they ask you about ‘work’ and you can so easily say ‘ah, forget about that’.
It’s maybe around three pm or so and that thing happens where you see yourself sitting there. I did not want this and yet the screaming voice inside is silenced so easily most of the time. You are standing up, you are moving around. You yourself see your desk and the other people. Go make a coffee. There is someone else there and they are using you to talk to because they are uncomfortable speaking to the woman in the kitchen who is new and so you do the thing whereby you coalesce their conversation so you can leave agreeably but in the end you insult them both by being callous and ‘coming down’ from a ‘higher level’ BUT you are aware of this quasi-elevation so there are positions and responsibilities to be adhered to and in the adhering you feel yourself perpetuating the myth and simultaneously liking the myth/respect thing and putting them in their place makes making your pay check and all the days indiscretions and belittlings seem worthwhile (read: for the few minutes you can extract respect for free).
[1] Okay so uniforms: The police officer or even cinema attendant saying ‘please step behind the rope’…the rope? Humans coexisting within these precepts, right. We have lost the class system and replaced it with; a class system. Revolution? Our free market economy has bred the new world order of money and privilege so now you can MAKE yourself upper class (instead of it being bestowed). A step in the right direction we thought and then the old ways just seeped in. Imagine trying to converse with a uniform and what it gets you. Hey, you’re just paid to act (crucial word) like that. Its hard to snap them out of it and remind them that: hey, the uniform comes off and you are a human. ‘Get behind the rope sir’. Really? You care whether I am on this or that side of a cotton rope. What the hell happened to you? And when you finish your ‘role’, then what? What do you become, or what are you in the first place? Nothing until you adorn a role thing..
