Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace by Saval Nikil

Author:Saval, Nikil [Saval, Nikil]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780385536585
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2014-04-22T07:00:00+00:00

“Today,” Harrington concludes, ruefully, “you see such formerly robust individuals, now mild of mien, poking along our corridors in groups and committees with administrative papers in their hands. They have lost something … verve … appetite.”50

Yet the perquisites of the Crystal Palace are anything but drab, and its denizens are as well treated as any human beings have been in the history of the planet. Their job security is mostly assured; their pension plans generous; their work lives as slow and easy as they want them to be. “We are not worried about our jobs, about the future, about … much of anything,” Harrington writes. “This is a curious sensation, not to have any real worries.” He calls it a “private corporate welfare state,” European-style social democracy for office workers, a bastion against the brutalities of the American free-enterprise system that, in Harrington’s view, made the country great. Its success permits the members of the newly great American corporations to snooze through days that all seem to blend into one another. In a typical day, the company bus takes them from the commuter rail station to the Palace. Light music—provided by the Muzak corporation—starts up, going off and on every fifteen minutes. “It is said that this music increases office productivity by a sizable percentage,” Harrington says, “but I find that if I listen to it at all it puts me in a revery. It makes me feel as if I were in a cocktail lounge.” The entire scene conveys unbelievable comfort and a drowsy atmosphere of pleasant boredom, like the episode of the Lotus-Eaters in Homer’s Odyssey:

Our employees … have a view unequaled by any offered to a group of employees since time began. Rolling hills go on to the horizon; they will burst into flower next week, and when autumn comes they will flare red and gold, and winter will put snow on them like frosting. Our landscaped grounds, too, will flower. We can smell honeysuckle; our lawns are so green that they hurt your eyes. Meadows extend to the hills and beyond like a perpetually green future.51

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