[Intro - Instrumental, electronic beats] [Verse 1 - controlled, gradually accelerating] Basement screen lights the room, coffee gets cold, inbox blooms. Chair rolls back, chair rolls in, same four walls and the day begins. Family upstairs, I can hear their feet, life happening twelve steps from me. Door at my back, technically free— so why does it feel like they locked it on me? Log in early. “Morning, team.” “How was your weekend?” Good. Fine. Great. Now here’s fifteen things that can’t wait. Meeting at eight about meeting at nine, nine runs late, ten disappears. No highway, no train, no snow— just click “Leave Meeting” and nowhere to go. [Hook - heavy, mostly rapped] Downstairs, stuck in a chair, home’s right above me but I’m never quite there. One more call, one more screen, one more urgent in between. They cut the people, not the calls. Home’s twelve steps away, and it feels like miles. [Verse 2 - faster, louder, anger sharpening] Then comes the email: “Organizational change.” Funny how clean words make ugly things strange. “Streamlining.” “Realignment.” “Efficiency gains.” Translation: three people gone, we inherit the pain. Cut the staff, not the workload. Cut the payroll, keep the deadlines. Hand us the pieces and call it optimizing. Monday I cover somebody’s list, Tuesday another one lands. Wednesday I own what nobody explained, Thursday they ask why performance has changed. Friday: “Great work adapting.” "Adapting?" Three jobs. Same basement. Same paycheck. Yeah. I’m folding in half. [Verse 3 - rapid-fire, near-yelling, furious] Now I’m chasing my timecard, chasing the clock, chasing down hours I already forgot. Monday was this, Tuesday was that, Wednesday got moved when the priority flipped back. “How many hours did you spend on this client?” I don’t know— I was fixing the thing you said couldn’t wait while somebody else said the other thing’s late. Five high-priority issues, all number one, all need it now, all should’ve been done. Pick one. No, not that one. Actually switch. Stop what you’re doing, we need you on this. New fire, new lane, halfway through that, priority changed. Then comes the reminder: TIME CARD DUE. Right. Apparently that’s urgent too. So I stop fixing the urgent production issue to reconstruct Tuesday from emails and tickets, so somebody can report where the hours all went while the work I stopped doing gets urgent again. Then HR drops in: “Mandatory training. Due today.” Perfect. Five client fires burning downstairs, but now click through slides about workplace awareness. And suddenly that is the priority— until somebody asks, “Where are we on those five priorities?” [each question louder] Which priority? Original priority? New priority? Training priority? Timecard priority? I need a priority meeting to determine which priority gets priority. [Verse 4 - true double-time, yelling] Messages stack and notifications crack, answer one quick, get eleven right back, red dots multiplying all day, green light says I’m available anyway. Status turns yellow, somebody checks: “Hey, just making sure you saw what I sent.” Yeah—forty seconds ago, give me a minute. Spreadsheet open, ticket behind it, chat on the left, email beside it, phone starts buzzing. “We value balance.” Great. Can you demonstrate? Every position you eliminate gets divided by the people who remain. Call it efficient, I call it weight, put another brick on my chest, then ask why I’m stressed. Sit, click, type, stare. “Hey, are you there?” Yeah. I’m here. I’m always here. That’s the problem. [Break - near silence] Upstairs, I hear laughing. I turn toward the door. Ding. “Can you jump on a quick call?” ... Sure. [Verse 5 - slower, intimate, anger giving way to hurt] Nobody tells you this about working from home: you don’t leave your family. You leave them one floor at a time. You hear dinner getting made, hear the kids talking, hear your whole life through the ceiling— and keep typing. Because technically you’re right there. That almost makes it worse. No highway. No late train. Just a staircase and: “I’ll be up in a minute.” That phrase has stolen hours from me. [Final Verse - rebuilding, steady resolve] I thought working from home would give something back. No commute meant more life. That was the math. Then somebody left. Then they cut another. They figured: He’s already home. He can stay on. He can answer. He can fix it. Exactly. I am right here. And so are the people I’m doing all this for. Maybe five means five when nothing is burning. Maybe one unanswered message can wait until morning. Maybe “do more with less” hits a wall when the less is people and the more is all. [Final Hook - wider, resolved] Downstairs, not stuck in the chair, home’s right above me and I’m going up there. Close the screen. Kill the light. They can wait until morning this time. Home’s twelve steps away. So tonight— I’m taking twelve. [Spoken Outro] Laptop closes. Ding. Chair rolls back. One step. Two. Three... I’m coming.
