The Utopian Workplace
…a two-part narrative on where workplaces are today and where they could be
Part 1
2019, Current time-space continuum, 7 AM
You just woke up and crawled out of bed hoping that the day passes with as ease as your morning dump. While brushing your teeth with crude vigor, you’re sad that the weekend is over and that you need to face the nightmare of your boss. If you can afford the time, you sip that heavenly coffee/tea while you perform your morning ritual of a LinkedIn search for that dream company/job. As you get dressed you tell yourself how fortunate you are, to be able to pay your bills & plan that next vacation. So what, if getting to that sassy office location in the super deep heart of the city from your suburb home isn’t exactly a breeze. The salary, bonus and RSU’s pretty much put you in the top 20% of your city — and people say that’s a good thing. Armed with that statistic, you drown your senses in the noise of NPR — silently mulling over capitalism, racism, immigration, climate change & healthcare when a moron quickly cuts into your lane and brings the rage back on. You curse for a good 15 seconds and feel somewhat relieved. An hour later, you reach your brick and mortar office but it’s already 9:45am , finding parking will be a challenge. When you finally step out of your S-Class, its already 10:01 am. You pace your way to the daily scrum meeting room. Thankfully, with projector not cooperating again and someone typing on their keyboard over the conference call, your boss is pretty occupied. He doesn’t notice that you’re a few minutes behind. Another morning bullet dodged. Everyone goes over their status updates while you check random peoples’ status updates on Instagram and Twitter. Before you realize, it is your turn to speak.You do the usual — glorify what you’ve accomplished in the last 24 hours trying really hard to be the cool kid in the room (although you’re 31 now). Your boss isn’t happy though (typical) but your bestie at the other end of the room sends a glance & a text of re-assurance your way. As soon as the meeting gets over, your teammates shoot small-talk darts at each other discussing weather, weekend and traffic situation at lengths. You quietly slide past those attacks and hit your bestie with a blast of ‘WTF-is-wrong-with-the-world, episode#974183256’…
