The Work Face

Several years ago, when I was considering a career move but too overwhelmed or too frightened or just too damned stuck in my position to make it happen, I bought and read a book by Stephen Viscusi called “On the Job.” It was actually recommended by my boss. It was written by her friend’s brother, and she had originally purchased it because of his helpful advice about getting along with difficult colleagues.

But I found the rest of the book disturbing. I think it was mostly geared toward the newbie, on how to contort oneself into the proper employee worthy of respect and eventually, promotions.

I didn’t want to be contorted. I didn’t want to keep my opinions to myself at all times, not let on that I had a life outside of the office, be circumspect about what I did on the weekends.

According to Viscusi, gossiping about other employees, or letting on, say, that you partied a lot, or just got tattooed, or held a controversial viewpoint, could make you less likeable in the eyes of certain higher-ups and therefore, off the short list when promotions came around and possibly on the list when layoffs were required. After all, as humans, don’t we want to be with and work with other humans we like?

Yeah, OK, I thought, swell, but I can’t live like this. I can’t have two faces, one for work and one for the rest of my life. I can’t take all the toys off my desk and just nod and say, “it was fine, thank you,” when someone asks how my weekend had gone, and pretend that after five or six years of working with some people, suddenly my personality had gone underground. It seemed cold and distant and fake. Not to mention what people would think. They’d worry that I was coming down with the flu, or worse, that I suddenly decided I hated them all, or was distancing myself because I was planning to leave.

And then I’d be on that layoff list for sure.

But wasn’t I playing the game already? I wasn’t showing them the “real” me. My boss knew I was a writer, as did certain people, but I balked at letting the whole international community know by nixing her idea to publish a profile about me in the company newsletter about me and my novels. I didn’t want to give the impression that I wasn’t serious about my work, I said. And I didn’t want anyone thinking I was using my computer for non-work-related purposes (she said, deleting her browser history). And I held my tongue for so long about how the company was run that I’m surprised my muscles didn’t give out years earlier. I put up with so much political crap, smiling and saying, “no problem,” that I could have been a case study for Viscusi’s next book. But in an Austrian-run company with a go-go management style and a union labor force, you don’t exactly get on the catwalk and shout out your 99 theses, some of which included that I thought most of the management were assholes who didn’t know how to manage their own time let alone their departments, that I thought we were pushing people too hard, that there was never time to do it right but always time to do it over, that one day I planned to write a novel including some of these buffoons and I was so looking forward to the idea of killing one or two of them off. That management has no guts and couldn’t retain good people to save their lives, but clung tenaciously to the bad ones. And if I ran the place, the coffee would be decent and lunches would be longer and we wouldn’t have a constant brain drain and there’d be an exercise room and people would actually WANT to work here. And another thing. Unions have outlived their usefulness and are now, for the most part, a bunch of whining babies who are a drain on company productivity and the American economy.

And then I’d high-tail it for the door.

But seriously. How could I be one person inside that building, and another one outside of it? I guess people do that all the time. Like, who would guess that the buttoned up secretary liked to go to nudist retreats on her vacations? That the quiet engineer in the corner had six bodies buried in his basement? (Seriously, there was a guy we all wondered about) That the seemingly happy-go-lucky sales guy was going through an ugly, wrenching divorce?

I mean, we all have our “things,” but are they things we’d want all of our coworkers to know about? Well, maybe not until you get to know them better. Then maybe you could tell them about that special closet in your apartment or why you show up hungover on Monday mornings or where that scar came from.

And if I had it to do over again…well, I wouldn’t, but that’s beside the point. But one thing I wish I’d done on my last day is upload a particularly steamy love scene from one of my novels and leave it on my computer. Maybe on one of the network drives.

That would give them something to talk about. Or not, if they’d read Viscusi’s book.