06:43 AM: You clock in. Seventeen minutes early—very safe, but you should have done better. Just ten steps from the door and you have already forgotten what the morning air felt like. Instead, you feel uncomfortably warm and moist. Muggy—that’s the word. Muggy like a rotten swamp, or the inside of a mouth. Perspiration forms on your wrinkled forehead, and in your armpits from the sudden temperature change.
06:57 AM: The sweating worsens as you climb the stairs to the 4th floor. You pull at your collar but do not loosen your tie—real business cannot be casual. The stairs are a shiny, yellow-white, and slightly sticky—must be a cleaning product the janitors use. The whole building is coated in the same red wallpaper. There is something lively about the color—it really invigorates you to look at—and the curved, dark maroon lines give it the look of a tunnel. It makes you really feel like you’re going places. Of course, you don’t touch the wallpaper. It’s moist and squishy.
07:03 AM: You open the door to Office 432. The walls are bare except for the red, going places wallpaper. Your Office. On the way down the hallway, you ignored the new, shiny, yellow-white wall that now covers what was Office 425. The wall was not there the day before, but, in a fast-moving, hard-working, industry-disrupting company like yours, changes get made fast. In such a vital industry, those that can’t keep up get chewed up and spat out. Office 432 has been Your Office since management recognized your worth and promoted you a few months ago. You are valuable.
07:06 AM: There are only two thing on your desk: the bulky company computer, and your own copy of the product—a gift for your promotion. You log on to your company computer. Typing on the keyboard sounds like chattering teeth, and each key is slightly concave with hard edges. Every keystroke is logged in the company database and bitten into your cracked nails; you are not supposed to goof off on company time. You would never do that. That is part of the reason you’re so valuable—you respect the company’s time.
07:08 AM: Your work begins in earnest. You check your correspondence, and sort by urgency. Those messages with the red exclamation point—those cries for help—you answer first. Many of these are complaints about the quality of the product. You are polite, but firm—no, there are no refunds—and you helpfully remind them that in the fine print, the warranty was clear it did not apply if the product was mis/used. The “/” was not a typo; a company like yours would not have a typo in the warranty. And, you add anecdotally, the one in Your Office works just fine.
10:43 AM: After much more correspondence, and many filled spreadsheets, you step outside and take a walk down the hallway to the water bubbler. There you find a coworker in a blue and white dress—you do not know her name, and the offices do not have plaques. She might work in 429, or 411, or 420. Mentally you dub her Nines. She is as surprised to see you—you have not interacted much with coworkers since your promotion, since you were moved out from the smelly cubicles in the basement that everyone calls the Gut. Here on the important floors where real work gets done, you must focus, so to each their own office. Everyone is packaged separately like pills or granola bars.
10:44 AM: Nines takes a sip as you pour yourself water into a paper cup threatening to dissolve in your hand. “Have you heard the company’s downsizing?” she asks. You hate her immediately. Gossiping on company time. How did she get promoted with that kind of attitude? “If that were the case, I’d be staying on.” “Oh.” She looks at you with pity. “Not Oh. Yes. Yes! I’m too important to the company. Management likes me.” “Giants like Jack.” You are suddenly suspicious. Not just a gossip, but possibly union. “Jack’s a no-good goose thief. A lazy grifter who wants handouts and doesn’t know the value of a hard day’s work. Jacks get fired. Jacks get swallowed up.” You knock back your water—it tastes like backwash and paper—and try to leave Nines on your cool line. She says after you, again with pity, “Enough Jacks and the Giant chokes. But alone, he’s nothing but a snack.”
10:50 AM: You would slam the door to Your Office, but it costs more than you, and you would lock it, but the locks are on the outside. You slump into your chair. How dare she? How dare she? You are going places. You are on the rise: talented, meteoric, vital, lifeblood. A Giant can’t downsize and stay a Giant; that’s backwards. Nines is not going places, unless those places are the streets. But you must calm down. You are being unproductive on company time. Back to work.
01:25 PM: Lunch break! Well, Snack Time!, actually. Five minutes is enough to eat the apple you brought with you, and maybe even your small bag of nuts. You bite into the shriveled apple, savoring the juice. It makes you appreciate the food all the more, when you must eat it so quickly. That was what the correspondence informing you of the policy change said. The same correspondence had rechristened the lunch break “Snack Time!” for morale. Nines, the union hack, probably wanted two-hour lunch breaks, and that was why the union couldn’t be trusted. What work would get done, if all of company time was spent at lunch? The company was a fast-moving, hard-hitting, industry-disruptor. No time for lunch, only snacks.
01:28 PM: The Manager enters without knocking—understandable, he’s a busy man. His name is A. Troy, but his last name is pronounced the fancy way, like Troi. He dabs at his mouth with a handkerchief. “Sorry to cut into your snack, my friend, but my lunch meeting ran long.” “It’s no problem, Sir.” You didn’t need those nuts anyway—salty as they were, you would have to go back to the water bubbler and risk an encounter with Nines. “That’s just the kind of attitude we like, pal, which is why we have a request for you. A rush job just came in, and we need it done ASAP. Now, when I need good work done ASAP, I think of you. You’re ASAP. So, would you mind staying a bit later tonight to get that done for us, bud?” “It’s no trouble at all, Sir.” “That attitude is why you’re going places, chum. You’re the flesh and blood of this company.” You shake hands—his is meaty, yours is not. Snack Time! is over, so you get back to work.
03:43 PM: You finish feeding data into spreadsheets into databases into future graphs in future board meetings where your work holds up the line-which-goes-up like Atlas. When you join Management, you’ll put that on your business cards. A. Tlas, pronounced the fancy way, like Tell Us. You get to work on the ASAP job you’ve been given that means you’re going places, chum.
07:48 PM: You hear your coworkers who are not going places, chum start to file out. Soon you will be the only person in the building. You keep working, clicking away through documents and digesting their contents.
09:33 PM: You walk down to the water bubbler. It tastes like backwash. You’re hungry, but you don’t eat on company time. The lights are dim—a cost-saving measure. Cost-saving measures mean going places, chum employees like you can be paid overtime. Except you’re not getting paid for this overtime, but you are demonstrating your loyalty to the company, which is worth more than money. Loyalty means stability. The wallpaper looks like it’s tensing around you.
11:41 PM: You are done. You grab the doorhandle to find it is locked. The wallpaper is undulating and starting to leak.
11:42 PM: You send out correspondence on your company computer, marking them urgent, red exclamation points—cries for help. Every keystroke is logged in the company database, and your fingers are bleeding where the keys bit into the meat of your hands.
11:43 PM: You do not have time to digest what is happening to you. You swallow—it tastes like backwash. You are swallowed—you taste like the flesh and blood of the company.
06:50 AM: Workers clock in and trudge down wallpapered hallways, ignoring the shiny, yellow-white enamel wall where Office 432 was a late night snack.
Writer | Mike Rosenthal ’27 | jrosenthal27@amherst.edu
Editor | Jorge Rodriguez Jr. ’26 | jrodriguezjr26@amherst.edu