Painfully Employed
Ever stop to think how normlings mentally frame their jobs? Because it’s not what you’d expect. As a neurodivergent oddball, I foolishly assumed work had to do with getting money for providing value to an organization.
I can be adorable like that.
I somehow missed the memo that offices double as daycare centers for overgrown toddlers who thrive on gold stars and affirmations that they’re “crushing it.”
(They’re not.)
It turns out that my neurotypical colleagues measure productivity by the number of smiley emojis they accumulate in a day. And if I dare to point out that maybe, just maybe, we should be doing real work, I get branded a “toxic influence” and the culture police sentence me to a “coaching conversation” followed by a series of mandatory seminars.
Speaking of seminars, I spent roughly 94% of my work life trapped in mandatory training courses on everything except my actual job. The corporate enlightenment brigade had an uncanny ability to strike at the precise moment I was accomplishing something useful.
Take the time I spent three days tracking down a bug in one of our systems. It was one of those slippery problems that hides behind layers of logic and only reveals itself after hours of quiet staring and muttered profanity. I had just traced it to what looked like the offending line of code when my email chimed.
“Mandatory Training Assigned.”
I felt my sphincter tighten.
I ignored the notification and kept working.
Thirty seconds later another email arrived.
“Reminder: Mandatory Training.”
Then another.
Then one marked URGENT.
Soon my laptop was chiming, my phone was vibrating itself toward a swan dive off the edge of the desk, and my boss was sending me texts with a tone normally reserved for incoming asteroids.
I moved my work screen to my second monitor and clicked the link.
The screen faded to corporate blue. A loading wheel spun thoughtfully.
Then he appeared.
Max.
Max was the company’s training mascot—a cartoon man with a smile wide enough to suggest a mild neurological event. He blinked too often and addressed me as “friend” in an unnaturally cheeritating tone.
The first lesson was Sexual Harassment Prevention.
Max led me through a seemingly endless series of slides, videos, and chapter quizzes, all of which he kindly summarized at the end.
“Remember, friend—sexual harassment is not appropriate in the workplace!”
Who knew? A revelation of staggering moral and intellectual complexity.
If you were, say, a second grader.
Homeschooled by a militia.
In a converted shipping container.
With no windows.
Or books.
I glanced at my second monitor, where the unfinished code beckoned. But Max wasn’t done. Apparently I also needed a refresher on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Max patiently took me through 45 minutes of slides explaining that discrimination in hiring, pay, or opportunity was wrong. This seemed like a strong progressive position.
For 1859.
In South Carolina.
On a plantation.
At the annual meeting of the Plantation Owners' Human Resources Association.
Where the motion was defeated unanimously.
Then the seminar took a sharp left turn and suggested that interns should feel empowered to override seasoned experts to “rebalance perspectives.” My eyes rolled so far back in my head I could count the ceiling panels through my bald spot. And to make sure they stayed there, Max came back to suggest that I invite them to lunch, presumably to provide corrective feedback on my diet.
It finally ended.
Max nodded approvingly. “Great progress, friend!”
I barely heard him as I reopened my code on the second monitor to get back to that pesky software bug.
Max raised his voice. “Time for Active Shooter Preparedness.”
Thirty minutes later, I knew how to hide under my desk. Which seemed optimistic given that .45-caliber bullets are not widely known for respecting cubicle privacy.
Next came Workplace Safety, so I can now pick up a box without spontaneously combusting.
Then Cybersecurity, which warned me not to click suspicious emails from Nigerian princes.
Max blinked encouragingly.
“Great job staying engaged, friend!”
My brain, which normally prides itself on separating signal from noise, felt like someone was dragging cognitive sandpaper across the inside of my skull.
Meanwhile on my second monitor I had successfully reintroduced the bug into three additional parts of the system. So I practiced DEI and reassigned it to an intern.
I had to accept that there was no escape from this form of corporate imprisonment (unless I counted retirement, projected to occur roughly three weeks after my funeral). But I did learn valuable lessons. For instance, I stopped trying to work while Max lectured me about “managing expectations.” I just browsed Roomba-riding rodents on my monitor. There was really no need to pay attention. The multiple-choice quiz at the end of each lesson let me click randomly until I reached a score deemed “compliant”—which, in business jargon, meant I’d successfully wasted another hour.
Speaking of wasted hours, let’s dive into the abyss known as business meetings. Believe it or not, there’s an entire profession dedicated to maximizing meeting length and frequency. It’s called “Program Management.”
Let’s say I want to borrow a stapler from Jim. A simple stapler. I’d make it halfway to Jim’s desk before our program manager, Karynne, would materialize wearing the kind of smile people use right before they ruin your afternoon.
Within minutes, she’d schedule a meeting to “facilitate the exchange,” invite three “stakeholders” I’d never heard of, and coerce me into launching a mini-project for it—complete with colorful bar charts, a wiki page, and a readme file. Then she’d schedule bi-weekly meetings to report its progress.
By the time we held the “lessons learned” summit three weeks later, I’d forget why I needed the stapler.
What I wouldn’t forget were the residual brain-splinters—and now I’d need to borrow a pair of very small, very patient tweezers calibrated for intracranial extraction.
For alternauts, meetings qualify as a special kind of torment: vague agendas, sudden topic shifts, and invisible social rules everyone else seems to understand by osmosis. I always feel like I’ve been dropped into an improv workshop.
Run by disapponted mimes.
Speaking Hungarian.
Who are quietly blaming me for ruining the scene.
Over time, I burned through every excuse to escape: “technical difficulties” (unplugging my router), “scheduling conflicts” (actual work), and “medical emergencies” (the emotional shrapnel from previous meetings). So I had to focus on survival—ways to get through a meeting without visibly weeping or screaming into what I prayed was my muted microphone.
I used to rely on the classic option: Buzzword Bingo. I'd make a five-by-five grid of corporate gibberish—“synergy,” “alignment,” “low-hanging fruit,” and other chants of the damned—and check them off as they inevitably spewed forth.
But it got too easy. Meetings have become so stuffed with jargon I'd shout “BINGO!” before they even introduced the agenda. So I needed something harder. Something dangerous. Something that requires a level of attention capable of distracting me entirely from the tedium at hand.
That’s how I ended up with Reverse Buzzword Register—a high-stakes game where you jot down any idea that's remotely useful.
The goal is modest: two thoughts.
Not brilliant insights. Not strategic visions.
Just anything that doesn’t feel like a chatbot rearranging stale fortune-cookie wisdom.
I’ve never succeeded.
So I needed another way to entertain myself—besides mentally composing my resignation letter.
With twenty-six percent profanity.
Written in blood.
Not all of it mine.
Double-spaced, per company policy.
The solution came to me as my manager burst into our quarterly planning meeting like a game show host, clapping his hands and declaring, “I’m very excited to announce…” as if he were about to hand out free cars.
(He isn’t.)
I heard my inner voice say Whoa, slow down Captain Enthusiasm.
I chuckled.
The senior director popped in, pretending to be unobtrusive while muttering that his previous meeting ran over—a man clearly burdened with many important meetings.
Oh, the Busy Bigwig has better things to do.
(He didn’t.)
At this point I stopped listening to the content and started assigning names to each species.
Gary, who delivers every sentence with the weight and gravitas of a Supreme Court ruling, yet produces less substance than a diet rice cake, found an opportunity to flourish.
“What we really need to do,” and here he paused for dramatic effect, “is operationalize a more scalable paradigm.”
The Pointless Pontificator.
Harvey weighed in. “I have concerns.” The Momentum Murderer proceeded to exterminate all joy in the room with a litany of potential pitfalls.
Just as the last fragments of optimism were being swept into a shallow grave, Cheryl shared her screen.
Her slide deck opened with a title page, followed by forty-seven bullet points and a stacked bar chart displaying five years of data by product, zip code, and astrological sign—charts that clearly demonstrated nothing except rising bewilderment.
Ah yes.
The Overhead Overloadinator.
The room fell quiet as we tried to determine which of the forty-seven bullets we were supposed to be frightened by first. Fortunately, Dave leaned forward to get the meeting back on track.
Or so I thought, before he launched into a 15-minute TED Talk about his plan to distribute company-branded stress balls to employees—a program he appeared to believe would revolutionize morale and possibly save the business.
(It wouldn’t.)
The Topic Thief.
Eventually even these coping mechanisms stopped working, so I started using meetings to practice Corporate Doublespeak—our native tongue’s evil twin.
I worked with software engineers and their regional dialect: Techno Doublespeak, a language that sounds like English wearing a hoodie, noise-canceling headphones, and a motherboard. This came in handy at “technical design” meetings, which had nothing to do with design and everything to do with competing for the coveted title of Alpha Geek.
These meetings transformed the conference room into a cyberpunk Thunderdome—minus the leather, but with twice the energy drinks—where highly caffeinated programmers hurled cryptic battle cries designed to assert intellectual superiority.
A typical exchange went like this:
Jin: “I wrote a program that generates text to make our junk food sound healthy.”
Translation: I am a genius, and applause is welcome.
Yuriy: “You could have just used Yummify. It’s free and already does that.”
Translation: I am an even bigger genius, and humiliating you is my cardio.
Irina: “True, but as I pointed out in my dissertation, Yummify has security flaws.”
Translation: I have an official document that certifies I’m a genius…and a deep, burning need for validation.
Tucker: “OK, I’m making an executive decision to investigate this further.”
Translation: I don’t understand any of this, but I make eight figures for forwarding emails, so who’s really winning?
Once I had attained basic Doublespeak fluency, I was fully prepared to survive my annual performance review. This event was conducted in the Managerial dialect, which is slightly less intelligible than printer error codes.
The ordeal began with a self-evaluation, where I was asked to rate myself on a scale that ran from “singlehandedly prevented corporate collapse” to “summon armed guards to escort this individual from the premises.” I had to do this for several vaguely defined “pillars” that had absolutely nothing to do with my actual job:
Communication
I described my ability to select the precise emoji for every Slack message. (Thumbs up, for example, means I didn’t bother to read it.)
Leadership
I highlighted my tireless commitment to filling out forms and conducting one-on-ones that never once produced anything but confusion.
Time Management
I praised myself for the art of scheduling back-to-back meetings so efficiently that not a single minute remained for actual work.
Interpersonal Skills
I demonstrated mastery of the overinflated affirmations du jour, choosing “awesome,” “perfect,” and “brilliant,” and other adjectives proving that human language has officially given up trying to convey information and now exists solely as an emotional noise generator.
Then I got to show off my Doublespeak writing skills by describing my biggest strength without sounding arrogant (“I humbly sacrifice my own time to mentor those who are less perfect”) and my biggest weakness (“Sometimes I work too hard, and it makes everyone else look bad—sorry about that”). I knew that if I nailed it, my manager, who had not read a single email from me since I was hired, would approve and then reward me with a 1.5% raise, which would almost cover inflation.
In 1933.
If prices were falling.
And I was paid in potatoes.
And the potatoes were 60% protein.
I had been training for this moment. By the time I finished, I had crafted what may have been the greatest piece of Corporate Doublespeak I’d ever written. Shakespeare had his sonnets; I had my self-review. It included every phrase I had ever checked off in Buzzword Bingo.
And it worked.
My manager skimmed it, nodded thoughtfully, and told me I was “ready for the next level.”
I got promoted.
For ten minutes, I floated. They appreciated me! They noticed! I had cracked the code.
Then reality arrived.
I discovered they were moving me from Data Architect, a role specifically engineered for my alternaut brain, into a position where I was expected to “circle back,” “touch base,” and “drive engagement” with Dave from Marketing—the guy who claps after every meeting, refers to team spirit as a “deliverable,” and once tried to convince Janitorial Services to align with the company’s “core competencies.”
And suddenly, I understood that my promotion wasn’t a reward. It was a reassignment into the linguistic gladiator pit of Management—where people wield empty phrases as if they produce results.
“Circle back” meant nothing had progressed.
“Touch base” meant I was about to lose 45 minutes discussing nothing.
“Drive engagement” meant I would be forced to feign enthusiasm about things that were neither engaging nor drivable.
To a neurodivergent mind wired for clarity, precision, and actual outcomes, this language wasn’t just irritating—it was proof that my job, my company, and possibly the entire economy had drifted completely free of logic, relevance, or observable results.
That’s when I learned a lesson no corporate handbook will admit: promotions aren’t always a step up. Sometimes they’re a trap door disguised as a staircase—one that opens directly into the world of management.
Can you believe that at one time, managers were trained for years and leaders were carefully groomed over decades to ensure they possessed the wisdom, experience, and judgment to run things properly? In today’s workplace, though, promotion to management operates on the highly scientific method of whoever talks the loudest in meetings. As a result, the people above me routinely make decisions with the same level of deliberation as a Magic 8-Ball. Most of their day is spent forwarding emails and uttering phrases like “digital transformation,” “ideation funnel,” and “heuristics” to make their job sound important.
(It’s not.)
Meanwhile, our top executives—promoted exclusively on the merit of golfing slightly worse than the CEO—devoted their time rebranding the mission statement for the fourth time this year instead of doing anything useful.
So when morale tanked and productivity cratered, these same leaders commissioned an expensive internal study to uncover the root cause. The findings were clear: the real problem was remote work. The solution? They forced everyone back to the office and addressed the widespread backlash by throwing a quarterly pizza party.
A pizza party.
So now, not only did I have to relearn which polo shirts go with the tan chinos, but I was required to feign enthusiasm for a neuro-nauseating lunchmare of congealed cheese on cardboard.
I had to get serious about survival. The office is a dangerous habitat for alternauts—too many unpredictable conversations, too much enthusiasm floating in the air like pollen. So I started relying on time-tested strategies to keep myself alive.
My first line of defense was The Headphone Deflector Shield. I created a force field of unapproachability by wearing the biggest, most industrial-looking pair of do-not-f*ck-with-me headphones I could find—the audio equivalent of a No Trespassing sign. When I wore them, people treated me the way hikers treat wildlife: they kept their distance and backed away slowly while avoiding direct eye contact.
If that failed, I deployed The Busy Bluff. All it takes is walking briskly with a clipboard, an envelope, or even a completely blank sheet of paper while furrowing my brow like I’m solving a national security crisis. Add the occasional heavy sigh, and suddenly no one wants to slow me down. It’s incredible what urgency can accomplish when nothing is actually urgent.
My personal favorite was The Meeting Mirage—booking empty conference rooms for fake meetings so I could work alone in peace. If a coworker walked by and saw me through the glass, I’d nod seriously, gesture emphatically at my screen, and pretend to mouth phrases like, “We’ll circle back.”
But the most ambitious tactic by far was The Desk Disguise. I’d leave a jacket draped over my office chair with a note that said, “Back in a jiff.” Then I’d go home. Occasionally I’d sneak in, reposition the jacket, update the note to “In a meeting,” and then slip back out. It was like maintaining a decoy nest to fool predators.
Usually these strategies worked.
Usually.
But every so often, despite all defenses, a coworker would breach the perimeter and initiate conversation. That’s when I had to activate Emergency Exit Protocols—a set of time-tested techniques for shutting it down without setting off the social fire alarm.
My go-to was The Cryptic Phone Call Escape. I’d pretend my phone buzzed, snap it up, and say, “They did WHAT? Hang tight, I’m on my way.” Then I’d vanish with the urgency of someone fleeing a crime scene.
If that didn’t work, I attempted The Bathroom Bailout—hopping frenetically on alternate feet and blurting, “Hold that thought! I just need to run to the restroom.” Then I’d speed past the restroom, out of the building, and, perhaps, directly into my new life.
But my most powerful defense was The Small Talk Escalater—weaponizing philosophy to create conversational recoil. If someone said, “Crazy weather we’ve been having,” I’d respond with, “Indeed. But do you think free will exists, or are we just prisoners of causality?”
If they persisted, I’d check my watch and ask, “Wait…what is time, really?” Then leave them contemplating the void.
And that’s how I stayed employed: not through passion, dedication, or corporate loyalty, but through a patchwork system of maneuvers that kept me from sobbing into a company-branded stress ball before lunch.
And I could tell my parents I wouldn’t be moving back into their basement, even if it broke their hearts.
(It didn’t.)