Working blues

You may be able to quit going to the office when you retire, but the toxicity of work lasts long after the paychecks stop. Last night I dreamed I had to copyedit an eight-page paper for Vladimir Putin. He was sitting at a long table lined with uniformed men. As I leaned over his right shoulder to show him the manuscript, I noticed he was wearing a hearing aid held in place with an American dime. But the most vivid thing was the nauseating deja vu that overwhelmed me—the humiliation of being forced into fawning servility, which infused my working days as a female copy editor and reporter in an old-school corporation with a set-in-stone hierarchy. And there’s something about behaving like a no-good, scum-sucking, nose-picking, boot-licking, sniveling, groveling, worthless hunk of slime* that does something to your self-confidence.

*Thanks, Al Yankovich


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