Did I Join a Startup… or Something Far More Sinister?
I’m writing to this column for some job advice. I’m not looking for a job, in fact I have one. I’m more trying to get a second opinion about the practices of the startup company I work at from a third party. Every time I express to my bosses that something seems off, or name the simple fact that things are done strangely at our work compound (they hate the word “office”), they tell me I’m crazy and put me in the calming booth.
That’s actually the first thing on my list: the calming booth is used to give us mental health support when we need some time to rest, but on all of the official intake forms I’ve seen for people who are sent there for quiet time, it’s referred to as “workplace hysteria.” The calming booth is a space the size of a porta potty with a door that locks from the outside and a constant loop of white noise. It’s very loud. It’s hard to take orders from my superiors when I can’t hear them because of the mild tinnitus I’ve developed.
Our work uniforms also deviate from what I would consider workplace attire. Normally startups have t-shirts. But on our first day we were given a full coverage burlap tunic meant to “take away our sense of individualism and give way to the collective goal.” Which is blender engineering I guess?
I haven’t mentioned what we do yet. We’re in the process of creating a Smart Blender. The idea is that it will give you a recommendation for a drink perfectly tailored to whatever you’re doing at a given time. It has to connect to your phone and scrubs most of your data to do this. If you put on a dance music playlist, it might recommend you a vodka cranberry. If you texted friends to come over for a pool day, it might recommend you a pina colada. If it hears you getting into an argument with someone, it will recommend you the strongest drink in it’s recipe book and actually egg you on to fight them. It’s a glitch we’re trying to fix.
But the blender knows things about me that I haven’t told it, things that I don’t even keep logged in my phone. I went to the store the other day and bought a frozen pizza, and then I stress-ate the whole thing because it was the first break I’d been given in two days and I didn’t want to go back to the calming booth. When I came back to the lab to work on the blender, it called me a fat greaseball. Then it spoiled the ending of a new movie I was thinking about seeing.
Part of the reason I think I’m such an easy target for it is the answers I gave to the questions on my intake survey. It was given to us to try to match us with people whose personalities would complement ours in our work spaces, but a lot of the questions just pried into sensitive information. I wasn’t sure how to answer “Are you an organ donor?” followed by “Can you be one?” And I probably came across as wishy-washy and meek because I wasn’t able to come up with a good answer for “What secret(s) are you taking to the grave?” This brings up another point of concern: we might have invented self-aware technology, and it is being used to be mean to employees.
I am scared at work. And the fact that we were recently asked to include a “bone saw” pulse mode doesn’t help. When I brought these concerns to my boss, he waved it off and said “advertising is served by hyperbole.” I worry that a day might come where we stop getting put in the calming booth and go straight into the blender.
I hope this message goes through. I have to hold my phone out through the space between the bars on my window to get any service. There’s a cell signal blocker above the work compound.
Sincerely, a concerned employee.
Follow up message from the sender:
Nothing bad is, or was ever going on at this startup company and related to these blenders. Available to purchase on October 20!
