The office is a surreal place

What the hell are we doing here?

Here I am—sitting at a desk, staring at multiple glaring rectangles, doing some shit that doesn’t matter. At least 8 hours a day, at the very least 40 hours a week, every week, every month, years and years gone by, nothing accomplished but survived.

I’m writing this from my office right now, in-between an onslaught of never-ending, never-important emails, Excel sheets, Teams calls, meetings, PowerPoints, small talk about nothing. Yes, I should be working.

Am I alive here? Barely.

But it’s comfortable. I don’t have to sacrifice my body (apart from the continuous sitting), some of my colleagues are quite alright (and equally disillusioned), the pay at least provides food and shelter. I merely have to sacrifice everything I ever believed in and—the only valuable thing anyone possesses—time and people I love.

The opportunity costs (“the loss of other alternatives when one alternative is chosen”) of not living my life, not following my passions. I spend more time with my colleagues in these grotesque Kafkaesque meetings than I do with my partner at home or my closest friends, who grow increasingly distanced.

Is this living?

Doing things I don’t believe in, no sense of accomplishment or purpose, forever. And then you die. It’s a small company with three CEOs. Yet their cars alone are worth more than everything I have taken together. I’m sure they felt some sense of purpose when they founded this company two decades ago, but I’m equally sure it’s all just a money machine now.

This leaves us with the following situation:

Three rich CEOs who own everything here, including the people. And, people forced to work here and sacrifice, well, everything. Hostages in some way. The CEOs are merely the tools through which the system dominates us. You can exchange the bosses (if you’re lucky and manage the torture and self-degradation that is applying for other jobs) but never the structure. AI could already do our jobs better than us, but they haven’t realized yet. This will also come soon.

People tell you you’re lucky because you work in an office, and they are absolutely correct, of course. I come from a family of refugees from the Yugoslav Wars, all blue-collar and uneducated, all constantly sacrificing their bodies in addition to their minds. Half of them have cancer or respiratory or heart diseases already; they are overweight and unhealthy and pretty much all hate each other. Not to speak of their mental health issues (this one applies to me too) and their political right-wing indoctrination.

But still, we are the same. Office and construction site. We the workers. We have so much more in common with each other than with those “business leaders.” We should be a collective, fight for each other, celebrate when any union pushes through wage increases, no matter if it directly affects us. But we are not. We are divided, restless, drowning in culture wars and bullshit. We are nothing because we are stupid and never fight for anything but our own individual comforts. We deserve this.

To my right, sits a colleague—24 years old—who just recently started here. When he began working here he reminded me of myself. Fresh from college, full of energy and motivation, optimistic and engaged. Two months later he is the same husk we are. Always tired, somewhat irritable, yearning for the salvation that are Saturdays and Sundays and the occasional holiday. An intern, who was definitely on the neurodivergent spectrum, was fired last month. She had a sort of mental breakdown at our office Christmas party. The official reason stated: We don’t have enough work for her. No one bats an eye at this announcement—just internally, maybe.

In The Factory: Revolution’s Call, my first novel, workers’ solidarity was one of the major themes. In the fictional account of this violent revolution—”’Violence never solved anything’ is a statement uttered by cowards and predators”—the workers succeed (this is a spoiler, yes). In the real world, we are as far from such an outcome as fifty years ago, an eternity ago. Who’s got the time, anyway?

The Factory had always been there.

Gotta survive another day, week, year, life.

Here I am, typing away on this essay in-between emails. Click, click, click, click, click, click, click…

Oh, it’s 4 pm and dark already. Cool. Gotta get the car from the shop, buy some food, cook, stare at smaller rectangles for a while, then sleep. Good thing it’s Wednesday already.

Enjoy your day,

Antonio Melonio

---

If you don’t want to support me on Substack, you can also help sustain my work on Patreon or with a one-time donation.

Thank you.