Category: Stuff I Was Allowed to Post
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By Ken Hollow, unwilling hostage of the green dot Slack. Teams. Discord. Whatever flavor of chat tool your company forces upon you, they’re all the same: endless streams of pings, emojis, and unread channels masquerading as “collaboration.” In reality, they’re just corporate anxiety generators — little dopamine slot machines that ding every time your manager…
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By Ken Hollow, reluctant attendee of frosting purgatory There are few things more cursed in corporate life than the office birthday celebration. Not because anyone actually wants to celebrate, but because HR insists on scheduling mandatory joy in the form of stale cupcakes and off-key singing. It’s not a party. It’s a cupcake-based hostage situation.…
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By Ken Hollow, reluctant protagonist in HR’s tragic novella Performance Improvement Plans — or PIPs, if you want to make them sound like a snack instead of a corporate guillotine — are HR’s favorite form of fanfiction. They’re not about helping you improve. They’re about writing a dramatic narrative where you’re the doomed hero, destined…
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By Ken Hollow, unwilling author of receipt novels Expense reports are the worst kind of creative writing: bureaucratic fanfiction. You take mundane events — a taxi ride, a coffee, a hotel room — and rewrite them into tortured corporate prose that might, if the gods of accounting smile upon you, result in partial reimbursement six…
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By Ken Hollow, reluctant commuter in pajama pants The great promise of remote work was freedom: no commute, no awkward breakroom small talk, no boss peering over your shoulder. Naturally, companies hated it. Enter the Return-to-Office mandate — the corporate equivalent of your parents telling you that “family dinners build character.” In reality, it’s just…
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By Ken Hollow, reluctant translator of corporate Elvish Corporate jargon is less communication and more spellcasting. Nobody actually knows what half of it means, but if you chant it loudly in a meeting, you gain +3 charisma and temporary immunity from accountability. It’s not English. It’s a fantasy language pack, installed directly into PowerPoint and…
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By Ken Hollow, unwilling trainee in email paranoia Corporate security training is the modern workplace’s favorite pastime. Not because it works, but because it wastes hours of your life while teaching you absolutely nothing — except that your employer really enjoys sending fake phishing emails just to watch you squirm. The Ritual of the Training…
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By Ken Hollow, unwilling landlord to capitalism Remember when remote work was supposed to be freedom? No more commutes, no more office politics, just pajamas and productivity. Instead, what we got was corporate squatting. Your home isn’t yours anymore. It’s a branch office, a satellite hub, a place where capitalism pitches a tent in your…
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By Ken Hollow, unwilling facilitator of algorithmic nonsense Brainstorming was already group procrastination with sticky notes. But now, thanks to AI, we’ve leveled up to machine-assisted procrastination. Instead of a room full of people shouting buzzwords, you get a chatbot spitting out 200 buzzwords in 30 seconds. Progress? Spoiler: no. It’s the same garbage, just…
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By Ken Hollow, reluctant reader of financial fantasies Quarterly reports are corporate fanfiction. That’s it. That’s the whole piece. Every three months, companies release a 40-page PDF filled with charts, buzzwords, and “narratives” that are less truthful than a Wattpad vampire romance. Shareholders nod, analysts pretend to understand, and somewhere an intern cries over Excel…