Wakey Wakey Bitch! It’s Your Office Commute

You, me, and merge lane traffic will be reunited very soon…

By: Andal Paul

August 2, 2021

You just got back from brunch on a Sunday afternoon when you check your calendar. Getting organized for the next work-week used to mean setting up your at-home work station, buying a gallon of cold brew from Trader Joes, and downloading the Peloton app. But ever since last month, when your boss sent a cheeky “Survey on In-Person Reopening” email to the junior analysts, you’ve been on edge. You could be sent back to the gallows (office) any day now. And it wouldn’t be so bad, you think, if you didn’t have to travel across the city to get there…

“Is it really as bad as I remember?” you ponder, stretching out on your Ikea futon and scrolling past ‘Outer Banks’ on Netflix for the third time in the row (just fucking watch it). Your fragile human mind has already romanticized the things you once screamed into your pillow about. Just because you have a new arsenal of podcasts to play through the scratchy speakers in your 2009 Toyota Corolla doesn’t mean you’ll be able to drown out the blazing honks and screeching tires belonging to the machines of your human brethren. 

I hope you don’t expect what’s coming. I hope you get into that car one early September morning, excited to get back into the office. I hope you merge onto 295 south from Kenilworth Ave and think ‘Oh maybe I’ll even get there early.’ The repugnant stain of oil and grease the industrial age has left on our mother earth will only shine through history to teach you monkeys a valuable lesson.