Workplace pretense: You're Not the Only One

You know that feeling when you're trying so hard to be the person everyone expects you to be, especially in a town this small where your boss is also your neighbor and your third-grade teacher is the… …

My neighbors see me pull in and they see a "conscious leader," someone who cares about the carbon footprint and the future of the planet. …

You follow the rules, you keep your boots polished, and you never let the mask slip. …

Like, you spend years building this whole persona of being the 'smart one' in the office, the one who can synthesize a forty-page brief into three bullet points, and then one day the gears just stop… …

I've been sitting at this desk for three years and nobody here knows a single thing about me. …

I wake up at 7, clear the entire support queue by 11:30 because most of these users are absolutely helpless, and then I just... …

i’m supposed to be this "senior" manager person at my firm but i feel like a total liar every day. …

I entered the corporate sphere again in the late nineties after six years of domesticity. …

I’m sitting here with my feet in a basin of lukewarm water because the double shift killed my arches and all I can think about is the way that person looked at me tonight.

I just sent the final 300dpi export of the "brand identity refresh" to Marcus at 2:14 AM on a Saturday.

I guess I should start with the suit, which is technically a charcoal grey but in the fluorescent light of the breakroom—which smells like old tuna and floor wax, by the way—it looks sort of like a… …

You have the expensive pens. …

Sitting in Terminal B right now and the lights are that weird kind of bright that makes your eyes itch... …

It ends with the "unexploded peppermint" feeling. …

I have always believed in the chain of command, in the necessity of the mission. …

I spend all day basically being a monolith of logic and "judicial temperament" and it’s honestly just... …

I just wired the rest of the tuition for my cousin Luis. …

I’m thirty and my whole life is basically just leggings and kale and honestly I am so fucking over it most days because everyone looks at me like I’m this like, perfect machine of health or whatever… …

I spent the last forty-eight hours sitting in my home office—the one my parents helped me paint eggshell white so it looked professional—working on that big redesign for someone at the firm. …

i literally dont know how i got here like how did this become my life... …