Sometimes the very things we like to glean a modicum of enjoyment from can suddenly instill within us a well of sadness when we realize that the sources we must cling to for comfort render us rather pathetic. Like putting a “fun” or “tongue in cheek” screensaver/desktop background on the computer of our cube that binds us to the corporation for life.
Sure, it’s all very amusing at the outset to enliven the workspace with your Kim Kardashian crying alternative (see here if you’re too out of touch or retarded to understand the reference), to lend a sense of levity to an environment so very similar to a Polish “work camp.” But when you find yourself in front of the same computer, with the same image–that same attempt at trying to tell yourself this isn’t awful–every day, it soon becomes a source of constant pain. A reminder that this minuscule amount of “enthrallment” is all you have to keep you going. To keep you from taking a pointed office supply and swiftly stabbing yourself in the neck with it. In short, you yourself have become the celebrity in question on your screensaver crying out categorized files as substitutes for the tears your boss would never allow you to form.
