Member-only story
A modern office metaphor mania
Where’s the humanness in workplace interface metaphors?
To all the office warriors, this is a short story of your courage and grit, living through the endless mania of metaphors in the digital world, often twisting your senses between pixels and atoms.
The workday had gotten busy for Riya, with a whirlwind of meetings and arduous conversations still ahead. Just when she dived into her next task, her manager slid the white nob on her chair, shaking her focus, and swerving her into a huddle.
‘Hi Riya, could we huddle?’ If you weren’t so tied up, we could’ve had a meeting.’
‘So we’re not meeting?’
‘Of course not. I’m just checking in with you quickly.’
Ah, the illusion of words, Riya thought.
‘By the way, Zen from sales is also joining us. He’s going to explain this new task that’s come up. Do make space, please.’
Riya stared at her calendar. Expectedly, the huddle from her manager left her with more work. Her eyes scanned for white space among the tightly staggered, coloured rectangles of her schedule. ‘When did calendars become paint by numbers? Thought they marked days and events rather than making my entire day an event,’ she murmured.
She hesitantly opened her inbox.
‘It should be criminal to allow that many emails to reach you. The tray can hardly hold anymore,’ David remarked.
‘Feels like we got tricked into this version of inboxes. Were these not supposed to sit at our desks?’ sighed Riya. Just as they talked, three co-workers she’d never met threw mail into her inbox and walked on.
Her commute back home was burdened. She felt her inbox's heaviness and the calendar's striking brightness. She couldn’t shake them off; the inbox strapped onto her back, and the calendar hung around her neck. They were her relentless shadows.
The next day, she spotted a box wrapped with a tiny bow at her table. She scanned the room curiously and noticed that every desk had one. Right then, Clara from Tools and Productivity walked past, sporting a wide and rather unsettling smile. ‘How are you enjoying our new tool?’ she asked.
