Working for integration

Integration isn't only for TV's "Severance", it'd serve us to try for it as well.

“Severance” is back on TV. The show, often directed by “Heavyweights” star Ben Stiller, portrays a group of people who have agreed to sever their work selves (‘innies’) from their everyday selves (‘outties’). The show is rife with symbolism and metaphors: work’s relationship to our consciousness, work and cultishness, leadership in the workplace, middle management, iconography in the workplace, etc.

The thrust of “Severance” has been the innies attempt to satisfy their curiosity about what goes on outside their employer’s confines. Season 2 in particular has dealt with the main character’s attempt to ‘re-integrate’ their outer selves with their inner, work-self. The process, which takes too many episodes to explain and resolve, has the character constantly mixing up realities, conflating their outer life with their inner, and so on. The protagonist is working to re-establish their integrity; to become whole again.

The show’s main theme is that work is a separate and distinct part of our lives and that full integration of all of our ‘selves’ is worth fighting for. For most of us, in the workplace we behave in ways we and our loved ones wouldn’t recognize in our everyday selves. Every tyrannical, capricious boss has had a partner, or at least has gotten laid. That manager that gaslit you about your performance? They have friends who don’t want to kick their teeth in. Even the person who pees on the toilet seat and doesn’t clean it up has a rich inner life. While I know my readership would never do such things, my point is that how we behave at work and how we behave outside of work are vastly different.

Currently, I’m looking for a new job. The character’s quest for integration has brought to mind the way we sever ourselves at work similar to the examples above. The show focuses primarily on the character’s desire to understand themselves fully, leaving this crucial aspect of work underexplored. Recently a manager at a prospective employer told me, over the phone during a final interview, they planned on hiring me. They’d spoken to my references, liked whatever I said in the interviews, and were ready to move forward. This took place on a Friday morning. The lead of the business unit told me to expect a follow up offer that afternoon or the following Monday, at the latest. Three weeks go by with no responses to my inquiries about timing until unexpectedly I receive an email letting me know I wasn’t going to be hired. Ghosted for 3 weeks, my references' time wasted, and given zero explanation for the change in course. These types of situations happen all the time. Often, much worse. A quick perusal of Reddit’s ‘RecruitingHell’ and ‘WorkSucks’ boards will give you a sense for what other tortures exist in the wonderful world of work. It’s safe to assume whoever did get hired received at least moderately better treatment than I, and anyone else who had reached the end of the interview process. Most significantly, there is no scenario outside of the working world–whether in the office or applying to be in one–where this sort of treatment of another person is acceptable nor tolerated.

People put each other through this. People who have and give love, people who are polite and conscientious outside of the workplace. It’s not just that we work when we’re at work, it's the work we have to do to hold two oppositional ways of behaving at once, while we’re at work. It’s tiring! There’s also the spiritual confusion which arises from spending so much time in a place that tacitly condones callousness, backbiting, ghosting and disloyalty while knowing such behavior, even if it’s occasional, isn’t welcome in other arenas of life.

This, and that capitalism leads to zero-sum outcomes with clear winners and losers, means the duality won’t be ending anytime soon. In my experience, my negative treatment was the byproduct of someone else’s hiring, albeit indirectly. The same could be said for someone else’s firing, promotion, or annual review. As long as some folks' upward mobility is contingent on other’s stagnation or outright dismissal, we’ll continue to have to sever ourselves for work.

While “Severance” doesn’t explore this aspect of work as deeply as other themes, both “Severance” and the issue presented here demonstrate the benefit of integration. In “Severance” the characters want to fully know themselves, to contextualize the work they do into their entire selves. Unlike in the show, those of us working know what we do at work, but wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to split ourselves in two to do it?