#Office Culture

[7frogsspeaks]

If you've never worked in a big corporate office you are missing out on half of Severance

Everyone seems to be talking about the setting of this show like it's a big mystery we're waiting on answers for, and I keep having to remind myself that this is the Unemployed Website because every single aspect of the severed floor is a direct parody of corporate office work. Some of it is pretty obvious to anyone (being a totally different person at work than you are at home, excessive surveillance, etc), but unless you've worked in one of these places there's a ton you're probably missing.

So, for those of you who (luckily) lack corporate office experience, here is a non-exhaustive list of real phenomenon Severence is referencing:

- Having absolutely no clue where anything is other than your department. A large corporate office truly feels like working in a brightly-lit, featureless labyrinth. You get lost so easily, and the number of turns and hallways in the opening scene is not that much more extreme than how I had to get to my department (which was over a 5-minute walk from the main entrance). It's common to draw new employees a map.

- Cult-like worship and constant quoting of the company's founder/founding family and core operating principles. Long-time employees will genuinely treat it like religious doctrine. It's scary.

- The relationship between departments. The different cultures, outrageous rumors, distrust, compete lack of understanding of who they are, how many of them there are, where they work, what they do, and generally treating them like a foreign country is barely even a parody. It's just really like that. Going to another department and seeing their equipment and work area (and being stared at by a bunch of people who don't expect a stranger to be there) might as well be walking into a room that's a hill with intimidating goat farmers.

- Other people's jobs being utterly incomprehensible. The department that had a room behind a wall next to mine apparently used it for filling backpacks with weights until the straps broke. Another department had someone whose job was to shine different lights onto pieces of fabric and record the color difference. One of my positions was measuring various pants 20 different ways and then taking notes while a specific person tried them on. Apparently a guy somewhere occasionally got paid to make watercolors of birds. Some people did finance. You get the idea.

- Only ever hearing from upper management (who are treated like a group of fickle, wrathful gods) through a nervous secretary and never hearing their voices/seeing their faces. You might know their names.

- Weird, uncomfortable, often ritualesque events that are treated like a big deal. The company I worked for, for example, would announce the employees of the year by having a committee of people with noisemakers and silly hats parade around the buildings until they got to the person's desk, and then take their photo to hang on the wall. People were not warned beforehand, it was a ~surprise~. This happened daily at random times for over a week each year, and long-standing employees got really into it.

- People genuinely fighting over all those meaningless, patronizing rewards like pizza parties, fancy pens, etc. Having an "employee of the month" mug, for example, is treated as an enviable status symbol. Presumably this is why corporations think this stuff will also work in the service industry (it doesn't because service workers are normal).

- Ridiculous conspiracy theories about the building, management, coworkers, or company history, peddled like gossip.

- New employees having a rough adjustment period where it feels like you're adapting to an alternate universe. Office culture is nothing like real life though it's closer if you live in white suburbia and have an HOA, so during most people's first time working in one they bump up against a lot of unspoken rules, weird taboos, and general culture shock. Most of this involves navigating strictly-enforced social hierarchies, verbal adherence to company ideals, and using only specific types of communication, and being chastised when you mess up. It 100% feels like being indoctrinated into a cult.

- Not understanding the purpose of the work you're doing, and only receiving vague answers, that it's "important", and that there's a big exciting deadline. No single department has access to the big picture for how everyone's jobs fit together to accomplish something, you'd have to work in all of them or in upper management to figure it out. The inner machinations and goals of the company are generally treated like a mysterious secret.

- Never seeing the sky. Window offices are a prized commodity since the buildings are so big, so unless you're a high-up manager or the company has gone to great lengths to add access to widows (most don't because it's really expensive) you likely won't see daylight until you leave, even if you travel around the building during the day.

And for the Lifetime Unemployment crowd, some more general job phenomenon:

- So. Many. Acronyms. And being expected to say them all with a straight face, even if they sound really silly.

- Coworkers effectively ceasing to exist the moment they leave the company, with zero explanation given for why they're suddenly gone unless there's a retirement party.

- Management giving ridiculously nit-picky feedback as a form of hazing/power play, especially to marginalized people.

- Upper management making sudden, drastic changes to your job expectations, physical workplace, or management structure with zero notice and penalizing you if you can't adapt immediately.

- The entire vibe of your job being dictated by who your manager is.

- Your coworkers acting like what happens at work is their entire life, and treating their home lives as something extra they do on the side.

- Having no clue who your coworkers are outside of work, and that information being largely treated as taboo.

- Being effectively locked in a sealed space with zero access to the outside world for the entirety of your workday, and being told that that's not weird or a problem– it's a benefit that helps you focus on your job.

Basically: There's no big mystery to the structure and culture of Lumon/the severed floor. Most of it is never going to get a canon "explanation" because the target audience already has one. It's all a parody.

EDIT: Reblogged with more office-specific ones

[vintage-tigre]

[american-boyboss]

[bugbyte]

So we started and caught up to current with Severance over the last couple of weeks and a) it’s weird and uncomfy but in a b) I also need to know what’s happening kinda way.

Part of me watches their weird little office parties like “yeah, yeah!! I hope some manager out there sees this and realizes how awkward it makes everyone feel!!!”

Except

Then I realized they’re probably going to start having these specific weird office parties on purpose, as a treat, like, Severance-themed specifically. Because no one learns anything and media literacy is dead.

Anyway, shout-out to the time my co-worker accidentally emailed a gif of Herschel from The Walking Dead blasting zombies with unlimited shotgun ammo to one of our corporate marketing heads thanks to a typo in Outlook. Thankfully he was cool about it.

[clove-pinks]

How to call off from work in 1846, by John Leech.

[victusinveritas]

[uchidachi]

Office culture bitch time let’s go

For anyone who doesn’t know, cartoons and jokes from the 80s/90s complaining about how terrible cubicles are were doing so because they were comparing them to private offices or office rooms that were shared between a few workers who were on the same team.

Cubicles allowed everyone to be moved to massive open spaces, with only fake walls between them, and each person had less usable space and less privacy than they previously enjoyed. And some people still had to share those spaces so they weren’t even providing additional quiet/privacy to those who had previously been sharing an office.

Open-plan seating is worse than cubicles, by removing privacy entirely and pretending that open space shared by 50 workers is “usable” to anyone. There’s no personal space, no sound-baffling, and often you don’t even get your own reserved seat! Open-plan seating is a plague on office culture, masquerading as a “positive” alternative just because people disliked cubicles.

[bookishbrigitta]

Currently freezing a wee bit in the office since I have a date(!!!) after work and no time to go back home/nowhere to reasonably change, so today’s goal is Do Not Sweat. Never been so glad for my workplace’s austere HVAC use!

(I did bring extra antiperspirant but it only helps so much when you’ve already sweat through 1 layer of it.)

[getoutofthisplace]

Dear Gus & Magnus,

We scouted tomorrow afternoon's filming location out at Cow Town today -- I love that place -- then we rolled into the office just in time for a game of Nerf Gun Capture the flag, which was a lot of fun. This is the moment right before Mark eliminated Bryan.

We stayed late at the office prepping for another shoot that will be here in the morning. Because the office is right beside the airport runway, Nene checked my location and asked if I was on my way home. But, of course, I wasn't on a plane. However, one of those planes we heard taking off as we worked was bound for Washington, DC and it collided with a helicopter before crashing into the Potomac. On board was a group of figure skaters who may have stayed at our hotel. Here's more of my perspective on that. So sad. And too close for comfort.

Dad.

Wichita, Kansas. 1.29.2025 - 4.21pm.

[upmala]

gonna start working at an office full of germans tomorrow. looking up “german office culture” “german work customs” “german greetings to use at work” “german businessman culture”

[silvermoon424]

I'm just being bitter and ranting at this point, but I love how in every corporate job I've had I've been snitched on by a coworker for reading books, complaining about something, taking too many bathroom breaks, whatever. I have literally never snitched on anyone despite seeing some shit and some people make it their entire personality to get involved in office politics and police what their coworkers are doing.

Most of my coworkers have been cool people, but some of them were definitely the "teacher, you forgot to assign homework!" kids in school. Guess that translates to a lack of worker solidarity, smh. Marx is crying.

[cherryblossomshadow]

Mx. D. E. Anderson (@/@diannaeanderson)

y'know, it occurs to me that the way I was taught about "peer pressure" was really bad. It was always framed as this active thing where someone would literally be asking me to do something and I'd have to learn to stand up to that individual who was exerting pressure.

.

Mx. D. E. Anderson (@/@diannaeanderson)

And like, that's one type of pressure, but the pressure to go along and conform is rarely so obviously individual and fully formed. There's normative societal pressure, too, that's the bigger influence and that's a lot harder to pin down.

.

Mx. D. E. Anderson (@/@diannaeanderson)

I was thinking about this in line with professional norms in an office. Very rarely is someone directly pressuring you, saying "you should do this thing" but it's more of "this is how it's done here" unspoken rules.

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Mx. D. E. Anderson (@/@diannaeanderson)

Like, staying late. It's rare (in my experience) that a boss will come right out and say "you cannot leave until I say so" but if you are the only one packing up and leaving at 4:55 and everyone else is staying until 6, there's a pressure there to go along with the norm.

.

Mx. D. E. Anderson (@/@diannaeanderson)

It seems to just be a way that systemic issues are made invisible to us in the every day.

.

Miriam, your CPA friend (@/space_case_mir)

Peer pressure was always presented as a negative influence to go against social norms. In reality, peer pressure was used as a way to make me feel wrong and bad because I didn't always conform to social norms. The social pressure to "be normal" was worse.

.

Rebecca Maschack (She/Her) (@/Maschack_RUSD)

One of my favorite quotes I read somewhere, probably somewhere on the internet, is that tradition is just peer pressure from dead people. Another thing is that peer pressure can be a GOOD thing. It can spur you to change and grow as a person. Just depends on your peers.

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Theo Darling (@/theothrows)

My 1st therapist asked if I had experimented with substance use and I said no and she said "Oh good! So you know how to stand up to peer pressure" Well, no. My peers were pressuring me to memorize bible verses and proselytize, lmao

.

GrimReaper Barbie (@/kukla_reaper)

i thought peer pressure would be about a dude coming up to convince me ~specifically~ to try meth, but it mostly turned out to be the general public trying to get me to take my mask off

[blaaaaask]

I tried out one of those personality quizzes and got INTJ-T.

Didn't even realize they had that extra letter.

Anyone else take one of these and you're like 'Well, that certainly explains a lot.'

Quote from the website:

Some personality types are drawn to jobs that require nonstop teamwork and interaction, but INTJs tend to prefer positions that offer independence. By working alone or in small groups, they can make the most of their creativity without constant interruptions from curious coworkers or second-guessing supervisors. They really do believe that if they want something done right, they’d better do it themselves.

End quote.

So, this leads me to a kind of funny story. I quit my desk job about a year ago because they wanted to change remote workers(3+ years) to "hybrid" (aka, slowly change us from our remote positions to in-office for X amount of days. I'm not stupid, I know eventually this would lead to going back to full time in-office. This is just them slowly boiling the frog.)

I, of course, resisted. Sent emails, had meetings, jumped through 100 different hoops. It was literally causing me so much stress that my doctor was trying to recommend anxiety meds (please note, the anxiety was not there until this stupid debacle happened?) I would write/tell HR endless reasons why I could not return to in-office working any longer (pre COVID times), but each person I had to talk to never read half the crap I wrote. And they kept saying 'well, would it be fair though?' Which, I pointed this out, that there were numerous people in various departments who were men who were within similar driving distances as myself who were staying remote and were not being questioned. But I, as a female, and all the female coworkers I had talked to, were facing the same requests.

I didn't want to be 'that girl' that pointed things like that out, but uh, it felt like a glaring oversight.

My department head had also just changed, and instead of having a boss who was eager to help me (he said as long as you're working, do whatever works.) New boss was like 'you need to follow the rules, I am not going to support you.'

So, with the issue sitting before me of 'do I follow their rules just because it pays well?' or 'do I leave, and pursue something I love?'

I quit.

I put in two weeks, which was hellish but freeing.

I have not looked back. My department was ultra small, so it felt sad to drop the ball on them like that, but I am not to be fucked around with. And I have put everything into my art here, my writing, and trying to build my own income. It is going slow (as in, I am making nothing right now) but what can I say? I absolutely love what I'm doing now.

Will I need to go back into reality at some point and get another job? It's possible.

Am I going to keep trucking away otherwise? You bet.

Moral of the story: Fuck those fucking fuckers, hahaha. But seriously, if you have found a means to work in an environment that works for you, do NOT feel like you have to change it!!

As I told them in my emails: if you're getting into gardening, and you have multitude of plants with varying needs, you tend to them following those instructions. Some need direct light. Some need dark spaces. Some like it hot. Some like it cold. You cannot uproot all your plants and put it into one box because 'it is easier to water that way.' You will kill off some of your most unique plants this way. You will end up with all of the same plants.

Also just random tldr: Fuck office jobs. And office culture.

Okay thanks for reading my rant. :)

[victusinveritas]

[cannabisexual]

whoever decided what the standard rules were for "professionalism" in business culture, i hope they're stuck answering emails which find them well for all eternity