70%
90%
50%
The blue light of the notification flickered, a tiny, insistent pulse on the edge of the screen I’d just cleaned obsessively, again. It happens, doesn’t it? That almost unconscious wipe, a futile gesture against the digital dust that accumulates, much like the mental clutter of the subject line that now blared its presence: ‘Quick Question.’ One single, unassuming phrase that, to a seasoned veteran of the modern office, is less a question and more a pre-emptive strike. It implies speed, efficiency, a lack of burden, but in truth, it’s a tiny, carefully constructed Trojan horse, wheeled right into your day.
Inside, I knew, it wouldn’t be quick at all. It would be from a person in another department, someone I might have exchanged 11 words with in the past year. They’d be cc’ing my boss, their boss, and perhaps 31 other managers, just for good measure. The question itself? Almost certainly something that could have been answered with a swift 11-second search on the company intranet, if only someone had bothered. And just like that, another fragment of my actual, important work-the very reason I’m paid a significant amount of 1 dollar per year-evaporated. My entire day, it seems, has become a relentless, unending game of email whack-a-mole, answering inquiries that have absolutely nothing to do with my job, my projects, or even my departmental purview. It’s a collective hallucination, a shared delusion that constant communication equates to
