Office
Story Stream
Going Soft March 21, 2025
I am sitting in a bland conference room in Midtown Manhattan with twenty-nine so-called business professionals, and one of our instructors, Sharon, has just told us to imagine a huge rectangular brass nameplate, as if walking us through a guided medi...
The Workplace Nightmares of 'Severance' March 20, 2025
Do innies have rights? By “innies,” of course, I mean the severed employees of Lumon Industries, relegated to the severed floor of the company’s offices, who work on a project whose true nature is hidden even from them. The medical procedure of sever...
Breaking Up with Facebook March 20, 2025
“Sarah, come to bed.” Sarah Wynn-Williams, Facebook’s director of global public policy, is on a private plane from Zurich to San Francisco, traveling back from Davos with Sheryl Sandberg, her heroine and the chief operating officer of Facebook. Wynn-...
Mister Lonely, the New TV Hero March 19, 2025
In the very first shot of the pilot episode of “Paradise”—a recent dystopian political thriller from Hulu—a man played by Sterling K. Brown lies alone, unrestfully, in bed. His eyes are bolted open. A watercolor wash of blue light floods his face. He...
"Homestand" by Will Bardenwerper March 17, 2025
A poignant memoir exploring small town baseball as a lens into what’s right and wrong with modern America—written by an acclaimed journalist and Army Ranger who, after returning from Iraq to a painfully divided country, rediscovered its core values i...
Who Would I Be Off My Meds March 11, 2025
Some years ago, in a condition of acute emotional distress, I found myself in the office of the resident psychologist on a unit of a mental institution. Sitting in this psychologist’s office on day four of my incarceration, I was wracked by a kind of...
Socratic Wisdom for a Lonely Age March 11, 2025
The Elks, the Shriners, and the bowling leagues are too far gone to be mourned. Even our dining has become solitary if our cultural commentators are to be believed. Office communities breathe on life support, as do many churches. Face-to-face interac...
Earl Weaver, Baseball Lout and Legend March 11, 2025
John W. Miller’s The Last Manager might sound like the kind of overcooked title you slap on a clickbait article, but the bold assertion has merit. Once upon a time, managers mattered. Then free agency and analytics handed the keys to the players and ...
The New Ex-Gay March 07, 2025
Last October, the UK Office for Equality and Opportunity confirmed its intentions to push forward a bill banning gay conversion therapy. Should Britain prohibit the practice, it would become the 29th country in the world to do so. While some have exp...
How “Severance” Makes a Fetish of the Office March 07, 2025
When “Severance” premièred, in 2022, it felt like an absurdist parable about the alienation of labor—a moody, eerie critique of technocapitalism that seemed in keeping with our age of “upskilling” and A.I. The four main characters worked at Lumon, a ...
Call Her “Daddy”! March 05, 2025
The hottest accessory in women’s fashion requires no cleverly engineered underwear, no skipped meals, and no waiting lists. Interested? See me in my office. Not that I have one—a trivial detail since that is not a requirement for nailing a tie.Ventur...
Toward Good Art, and Art Itself March 03, 2025
Last year, the New York Times published a list of what its critics deemed the best books of the 21st century. (So far.) Offices and book clubs across the country chattered about which books made it and which got snubbed, which were ranked higher and ...
