[Ω::FLOWBOT3000] [ALTER_EGO::COUCH_PROPHET] [CONCEPT::OFFICE_WORK×CORPORATE_INCOMPETENCE] [LYRICAL_RULE::EVERY_LINE_ADVANCES_THE_SCENE] [INTRO] I used to work in an office. Couple years. Maybe three. Long enough to understand why people need meetings to discuss what an email said. [VERSE 1] First week, man walked up to my desk, real serious. Said, "Hey, you got a second?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "How do I save this document as a PDF?" I looked at the screen. File was already open. Top left. File. Save As. PDF. I showed him. He said, "Oh." Like I had revealed some ancient technology. Next day, different department. Woman comes over. "Do you know how to make this column wider?" I said, "Drag the line." She said, "Which line?" The line. The one between the columns. She had been working there eleven years. [HOOK] Whole office full of experts. Nobody knows where the button is. Six-figure salary, asking me where the file went. Excel open. PowerPoint loaded. Everybody looking at me like, "Can you handle this?" Man, I been handling it all morning. I'm just trying to eat my snack. [VERSE 2] Boss had a title that took three lines on his business card. Executive something. Global something. Strategy something. Walked into my office. "Can you send me that spreadsheet?" I said, "Which one?" "The one from yesterday." We had forty-seven spreadsheets from yesterday. "What's it called?" "I don't know. It's blue." Now I'm searching through folders for a blue Excel file like I'm an archaeologist. Found it. Sent it. Five minutes later: "Can you put this in PowerPoint?" I said, "Sure." "What does PowerPoint do?" I stared at him. He laughed. I laughed. Nobody knew what was happening. [VERSE 3] Then Excel got involved. Somebody made a table with eight hundred rows, fourteen colors, three merged cells, and one formula that nobody understood. Every time you touched it, something disappeared. People started saying, "Don't click that." That's not a spreadsheet. That's a hostage situation. Then came PowerPoint. Forty-two slides. Seven different fonts. Charts pasted in sideways. Company logo different size on every page. Boss says, "Can you make it cleaner?" I said, "Yeah." I deleted half of it. He said, "Where'd everything go?" I said, "That's the clean part." [HOOK] Whole office full of experts. Nobody knows where the button is. Six-figure salary, asking me where the file went. Excel open. PowerPoint loaded. Everybody looking at me like, "Can you handle this?" Man, I been handling it all morning. I'm just trying to eat my snack. [VERSE 4] But the real problem was the snack vendor. Used to come every Tuesday. Little cart downstairs. Chips. Cookies. Fruit. Cold drinks. Office had a rhythm. Meeting at ten. Snack at eleven. Pretend to work till noon. Then one Tuesday, vendor didn't show. Wednesday, nothing. Thursday, HR sent an email. "Due to budget optimization, the snack program has been discontinued." Budget optimization. They had just hired another vice president. Couldn't afford crackers. I watched grown adults read that email in complete silence. One dude whispered, "They took the snacks?" Yeah. They took the snacks. That's when I knew the company was serious. [BRIDGE] They can approve a million-dollar project before lunch. But nobody can save a Word document as a PDF. That's management. [VERSE 5] Eventually I left. Last day, boss called me in. Said, "We're gonna miss your problem-solving ability." I said, "I know." He said, "We need somebody who can figure things out." I said, "That's exactly why I'm leaving." He laughed. I laughed. We shook hands. He asked me if I knew how to convert a PowerPoint into PDF. I said, "File. Export." He wrote it down. I went home. Never opened Excel again. Well— that's a lie. Mom had a spreadsheet for something. I fixed it. She asked me how I knew. I said, "I used to have a job." [OUTRO] Office work taught me one important thing: People don't want answers. They want somebody nearby who already knows. That's a whole career. And apparently they cut the snacks.
