Depressing Office Filled
With Depressing Looking People
MANHATTAN,
NY. - Despite talks of economic recession, the Tristis
corporate headquarters on
Whitehall Street is very
proud to display 35 stories of boring and lackluster architectural design
populated by a depressed, overworked, and underpaid
staff.
The building itself, a prime
example of unornamented, Modern architecture, is often overlooked by passersby
who cannot differentiate its color from that of the ambient smog. The windows
are painstakingly designed to let only the most cost-effective amount of
daylight into the building while still creating a bleak and joyless environment
for hard-working Tristis employees.
"Forget Google and their
namby-pamby healthcare incentives. Here at Tristis we proudly offer only the
most cold and uncaring corporate environment that the disillusioned drone has
come to expect," said Tristis human resources manager Geoff Cavum, pouring
himself a glass of cheap Scotch. "At Tristis, our people are happy to be sad,
and so am I."
The typical day at Tristis
starts promptly at 6:00 AM with no breakfast of coffee or donuts, which is quickly
followed by an employee gathering where they are willfully forced to watch
demotivational slideshow presentations displayed by a half-broken projector that
heats up the room and hums hypnotically.
At
12:00 noon, workers are given
5 minutes for lunch during which they are allowed to eat bread. Following the
meal, employees return to their cubicles where they do repetitive, mind-numbing
tasks while being monitored by old cameras cased in yellowing plastic that are
mounted atop their outdated CRT monitors. Pictures of cats hanging from trees,
with the accompanying text blacked out, are displayed in every cubicle.
"This is all about promoting
efficiency and reducing costs by sucking the life out of everybody," added Cavum,
pouring himself another glass of scotch. "We're all committed to sacrificing as
many comforts and benefits as we can so the man upstairs doesn't have to. In
these uncertain times, we're eager to compromise our integrity to see that red
line go down just a little slower."
Robert Johnson, a recent hire
at Tristis, is in charge of completing seemingly arbitrary and meaningless tasks
in stark isolation. Like other employees, he is repeatedly assured over the
building's intercom that his time is extremely valuable to the company, and no
one else. According to Johnson, "This is more than enough to get him through the
day."
"I came out of college filled
with hopes, dreams, and aspirations," said Johnson, popping a colorful array of
pills from unmarked bottles. "These are all very valuable resources to Tristis,
and I am just so happy to forfeit them all in pursuit of the almighty buck for
roughly 65 hours a week."
"Besides," added Johnson, "if
I don't work unpaid overtime, how am I supposed to afford the gas I need to get
to work every day?"
While any dissent at Tristis
is quickly squelched by office security, one prominent issue is that of over 30
shattered windows, all but one of which are on or above the 10th floor.
"A few days before I signed
my life away to American capitalism, the guy who worked in the corner office—I
don't think anyone knew his name— just sort of disappeared without giving two
weeks notice," remarked Johnson with yellowing, bloodshot eyes. "That's when we
found the broken window, and we all figured he left because he didn't like
having a draft that reminded him of the outside world."
The window problem is one of
the few issues that the management is willing to formally address. "It's a
problem we're aware of… man… like, we know it's a problem that some of our
windows have holes in them as big as a fully-grown, horribly depressed man,"
said a slurring Cavum, downing yet another glass of Scotch while pouring himself
another glass of Scotch. "But it's a cmall problem, we're not gonna pay to fix
it, and it doesn't matter 'cause we're all so happy here!"
"So happy! So happy!"
repeated Cavum, raising his glass while collapsing into his desk under the
weight of suppressed tears.
The one broken window below
the 10th floor appears on the 3rd floor, which just overlooks a dying bed of
shrubbery. The accompanying office is occupied by Hubert Muffler, an unpromoted
employee of Tristis since 1955. Employees recall that though he was very vocal
and ornery the day the window broke, he returned to the office the next day
without incident, and doesn't really talk to anyone anymore.
"Muffler is a model worker
because he doesn't burden people with the kind of distracting, resource-wasting
human interaction that Tristis frowns heavily upon," said Dan Carls, a recent
hire whose face only shows subtle lines of sullen hopelessness. "Because of the
restrictions on internet and cell phone use, I can't write e-mails or check in
with my family. But that's ok because the company assures me that really,
they're just fine without me."
"I'm just proud to be a
mindlessly dedicated automaton for a model company that eats my soul because
that's the best way to maximize profit," continued Carls. "I really don't care
for one of those fluff jobs I hear about in Japan, where 'salarymen' are
actually suing their employers for bad treatment. If my economics classes taught
me anything it's that no matter what, if it's good for the company, it's good
for me."
By Michael Wakcher
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