The Black Screen Silence
My thumb hit the red button before my brain could register the risk. One second I was listening to my boss, Marcus, drone on about “synergistic cross-departmental alignment,” and the next, there was only the hollow silence of my living room. I didn’t mean to hang up. Or maybe, in some deep, lizard-brain recess of my psyche, I absolutely meant to. It is currently 6:16 PM. I am staring at the black screen of my phone, my heart doing a frantic 96 beats per minute, wondering if I should call back and claim a dropped signal or just let the silence stand as my final contribution to the day. The thing is, we had been on that call for 46 minutes, and not a single actionable task had been identified. It was a meeting about the next meeting. It was theater.
I’m Hazel J.-M., and officially, I’m a supply chain analyst. I spend my days looking at 1006 different data points across various global shipping lanes, trying to ensure that 236 containers arrive exactly when they’re supposed to. If a ship is 6 hours late, the entire line stops. Yet, in my corporate world, the rules of physics don’t seem to apply.
The Evidentiary Trail of Inactivity
It’s 6:36 PM now. The office-the digital one, anyway-is supposed to be winding down. But I can see the green dots on the internal chat software glowing like radioactive eyes. My colleague is likely crafting a three-paragraph email to the entire team summarizing the “key takeaways” from that pointless meeting Marcus was just leading. He’s not doing it because the information is vital. He’s doing it because he needs that digital timestamp. He needs a record that shows he was still “grinding” at 6:46 PM. It’s an evidentiary trail for a crime of inactivity he hasn’t even committed.
The Factory Floor vs. The Digital Chair
I remember my grandfather telling me about the factory. You punched a clock at 8:06 AM, you worked the line, and you left at 4:36 PM. The work was hard, but it was visible. Today, I can finish a complex logistical rerouting that saves the company $156,000 in shipping fees, and it looks exactly the same as if I spent the morning playing Minesweeper.
Invisible Output vs. Visible Process Cost
Physical Work Done
Tangible Impact
The paradox: The *result* is invisible, so the *process* must be performed visibly.
This leads to a paradox. The more time I spend performing busyness, the less time I have to actually be productive. We are incentivizing the wrong behaviors. If I finish my tasks in 2 hours because I’m efficient, I am rewarded with… more work. But if I stretch those tasks out over 10 hours and complain loudly about my “crushing workload,” I am seen as a dedicated company man.
The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Oversight
I think about this every time I see a “hustle culture” post on LinkedIn. People bragging about their 16-hour workdays. My first thought isn’t “wow, they’re hardworking.” My first thought is “wow, they must be incredibly inefficient.” Or, more likely, they’re lying. They’re standing on the stage, the spotlight is on, and they’re reciting the script we’ve all agreed to follow.
“
It’s a crisis of trust. Managers don’t trust employees to work without oversight, so they demand meetings. Employees don’t trust managers to value their output, so they demand visibility.
– Hazel J.-M.
I’m still thinking about that hang-up. Marcus hasn’t called back. Maybe he thinks his phone died. Maybe he’s relieved to have 6 minutes of his life back. I should probably feel guilty, but all I feel is a strange sense of clarity. I’ve spent the last 36 days feeling like a fraud, not because I’m bad at my job, but because I’m tired of the play. I’m tired of the 106 unread messages that all say some variation of “just circling back.”
Reclaiming Visceral Experience
I’ve found that the only way to break the cycle is to physically remove myself from the stage. I need environments where the only thing that matters is the immediate, visceral experience-not how it looks on a calendar or a status update. This is why I started looking into actual, physical recreation that requires focus rather than performance.
Last weekend, I went out toward the border, looking for something that didn’t involve a screen. I ended up at segwaypoint-niederrhein, and for the first time in months, I wasn’t thinking about my digital footprint. I was thinking about balance. There were no green dots, no “read receipts,” no performative emails. Just the actual movement from point A to point B.
When Fatigue Becomes a Metric
We wear our exhaustion like a badge of honor, a 16-karat gold pin that proves we’re valuable because we’re tired. But exhaustion isn’t a proxy for excellence. In the supply chain, if a driver is exhausted, he’s a liability. Why is it different for a supply chain analyst? If I’m so burnt out from attending 16 meetings that I miss a decimal point in a shipping manifest, I’ve failed at my actual job.
The Illusion of Dedication
Time Spent Performing Busyness
80%
Actual Output Achieved
20%
The Curtain Call
I’ve decided I’m not calling Marcus back tonight. I’ll tell him tomorrow that my battery died. It’s a small lie, a tiny bit of theater in itself, I suppose. But it’s a start. I’m going to close my laptop. I’m going to ignore the 6 notifications that just popped up on my watch. I’m going to go sit on my porch and watch the sunset, and I I am not going to take a picture of it to prove I’m “relaxing.”
We have to reclaim the quiet moments. We have to stop treating our lives like a content stream for an audience of middle managers.
The rise of productivity theater hasn’t made us more productive; it has only made us better actors.
I’d rather be an efficient worker who disappears at 5:06 PM than a star performer who stays until 8:56 PM just to make sure the lights are on.
The Exit Strategy
Is the “done” list actually full, or is it just the calendar that’s bloated?
The theater is loud, crowded, and exhausting. But the exit is right there, and it’s surprisingly easy to walk through once you realize the audience isn’t even really watching you-they’re too busy rehearsing their own lines.