HN Reader

> “The office is, first and foremost, a space geared toward organizing people to become a certain type of subject: a cog in the capitalist machine.”

This seems to be the thing that bothers the author so badly. The thing is, working at a corporation is just one particular form of making a living. Many, many people find that the cultures in offices don’t agree with them, but that’s okay. There are many other options available to you. Learn a trade instead, or start your own business where you set the rules (Full remote! Snack all you want to! Work at night and sleep all day!)

I get the overall chagrin at having Jamie Dimon or whoever tell the whole company to RTO and you don’t get a say. But it’s the way the game is played — if and only if you want their money, the simple turnkey setup with a paycheck.

I don’t judge her for hating working in an office, but neither should she judge people who prefer the office. It sounds like she demands that we abolish in-person work just because she has so much anxiety about being around people.

> “I function best when I have a snack every two hours or so. At the office, I was too self-conscious to eat, so I spent hours trying to distract myself from my hunger”

Did anyone else find this peculiar? Why would someone be too self-conscious to eat? Is she afraid men are judging her for eating food? Other women? Zero times in my career have I paid attention to what any colleague was eating unless it was to ask them where they got something that looked especially tasty. Zero times have other men, or women, said to me “Check it out — Kathy’s eating another Clif bar.” Nobody cares if you’re snacking, just like nobody’s counting your bathroom trips. We’re all humans. We all do those things.

Maybe this is just what generalized anxiety disorder looks like and she (deep down) knows nobody else actually cares about these things, but I wish people wouldn’t torture themselves like this.