A day in the live of an employee at ######.
Theodore Abbott (he/him) // News Editor
The following excerpt was provided by a clinical psychologist whose research and professional practice focuses on corporate work culture. Their client—whose name has been redacted to protect their identity—participated in a 18 month journaling exercise which concluded shortly after their position at a large tech company was terminated.
By publishing this journal entry, with permission from the client, our intention is to raise awareness about the growing phenomenon of corporate jargon.
Dear diary, today was a rough day. I got news that our company is restructuring and our department has been designated for streamlining.
The daily grind started off like any other. I was at my standing desk banging out some action items that had been flagged by Copilot during our Monday morning scrum. Nothing too crazy—certainly not reinventing the wheel—just some low hanging fruit that needed to get drilled down before our Wednesday afternoon touch base.
My job at ###### is pretty straightforward: I’m a marketing coordinator who works primarily within stakeholder engagement. On a day-to-day basis, this means that I collaborate directly with our vast network of clients to optimize revenue pathways and implement data-driven success strategies. I think what makes me a major asset to the company is my ability to connect the dots, maximize interdepartmental synergy and consistently move the needle, quarter after quarter. This—among other value-adds—is why I’m confident that I won’t be let go from the ###### family.
In fact, just last week I was called into my bosses office for a quick huddle. Normally these sessions are meant to facilitate blue sky thinking and to make sure that all of our ducks are in a row, but this was different . . .
I was being named employee of the month, a first for me, and a first for anyone in our team! My boss explained that I exemplify the ideal mindset, combining a goals-first approach by using clean AI insights and supporting talent cultivation across multiple teams. Among my core competencies, he continued, is my bandwidth for ‘leveraging KPIs’ and ‘juggling multiple projects at one time.’ Suffice to say, I was on cloud nine after receiving such praise.
Today, after we got news of the restructuring, I reached out to my team leader to see if we could touch base about the streamlining. He told me this was a conversation he’d like to take off-line for now, but that we could 100 per cent stick a pin in it and circle back later in the week. This was a major red flag. I’ve seen my boss table discussions before, but never so obviously.
Until next time,
###### #.