The hope of ascending the corporate ladder to make your stint at the bottom seem all worthwhile is the general reason why office workers endure what they do, stay for as long as they can. It only takes them about five years to realize that, quite simply, ascension isn’t going to be the case. That they’re relegated to the same middling role with no chance of advancement lest one of the managers dies or finds his or her way to retirement after enough decades spent atrophying in the cube under the guise of “mentoring” “talent” doesn’t dawn on them until it’s too late.
Instead, they take a spin of the work wheel of fortune each day, hoping that the result yields something other than the only two options available: poverty (because, no, it’s never enough when considering how much of your time you’re giving away) or death. And sometimes, the latter is what one starts to hope for after enough years in the same thankless, banal position. At the outset, though, the office worker has such high hopes for a multi-layered wheel–with options like “middle class bliss,” “white collar wealth” and “four weeks’ vacation.” Alas this exclusive version of the wheel only exists in a land called When Capitalism Was Viable.