I am leaning so far into my monitor that the pixels are starting to separate into distinct ribs of red, green, and blue. My neck has been locked in this 45-degree tilt for the better part of an hour. On the screen, a grid of 15 faces maintains a collective mask of engaged passivity. We are currently listening to a mid-level director explain why the new reporting structure-a behemoth that requires manual data entry into 5 separate legacy systems-is actually a ‘strategic leap forward’ for the department. My left eyelid is twitching. It is a rhythmic, frantic little beat that feels like a Morse code message for help. I can see Sarah, two tiles over, sipping from a mug that I know is empty. She has been ‘sipping’ for 5 minutes just to hide the fact that her jaw is hanging open in sheer disbelief.

The Mechanism of Deniability

Professionalism, in its current corporate incarnation, has become a mechanism for preserving deniability. By forcing us to discuss absurdity in decorative language, the institution ensures that no one is ever truly responsible for the failure. If we all agree to call a collapse a ‘pivot,’ then the collapse never technically happened.

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I was talking about this recently with Peter R.-M., a digital citizenship teacher who spends his days trying to convince 15-year-olds that the internet is a physical place with real consequences. Peter has this way of looking at you that makes you feel like he’s debugging your soul. He told me that his students are actually better at spotting nonsense than we are because they haven’t been trained in the art of the ‘corporate euphemism’ yet. They just see a broken link and call it broken. We see a broken link and call it an ‘opportunity for asynchronous navigation.’

Peter R.-M. once recounted a story from his classroom that stuck with me like a splinter. He was trying to explain the concept of algorithmic bias to a room of 25 teenagers. He realized halfway through that he was using the same ‘professional’ obfuscation I use in my meetings. He was hiding behind technical jargon to avoid admitting that sometimes, the machines we build are just reflections of our own 55-year-old prejudices.

He stopped mid-sentence, looked at the class, and said, ‘I’m making this sound more complicated than it is because I’m afraid you’ll think I’m stupid if I say it simply.’ That is the core of the problem. We use complexity as a shield. We use ‘professional’ decorum to keep people at a distance from the truth.

The Performance of Expertise

I recently attempted to explain cryptocurrency to my aunt. It was a disaster that lasted 75 minutes. I found myself spiraling into talk about hash rates and decentralized ledgers, using at least 45 metaphors that were technically incorrect just to sound like I knew what I was doing. About 35 minutes in, I realized I was just performing expertise. I was being ‘professional’ instead of being helpful. My aunt just wanted to know if she was going to lose her 505 dollars. I couldn’t give her a straight answer because a straight answer would have required me to admit that I was also just guessing. This is the same energy we bring to the office. We build these 105-slide decks not to inform, but to overwhelm. If the audience is overwhelmed, they won’t ask the 5 questions that would actually dismantle the project.

Consider the workflow we were discussing on that call. It requires four separate systems, two manual exports, and what I call ‘the weekly act of faith.’ The act of faith is that moment on Friday afternoon where you hit ‘sync’ and pray that the API doesn’t decide to take a 5-hour nap. Everyone in that meeting knows that the API is unstable. We have 15 support tickets open about it. But in the meeting, we talk about ‘optimizing the synchronization window.’ We have turned the act of lying into a linguistic art form. When candor becomes impolite, the institution loses its nervous system. It can no longer feel pain, which means it can no longer move its hand away from the stove.

The Cognitive Load of Silence

This culture of decorative silence creates a massive cognitive load. It is exhausting to spend 8 hours a day translating what you see into what you are allowed to say. It’s like living in a country where you speak the language fluently but are only allowed to use nouns that start with the letter P. You eventually just stop trying to say anything meaningful. You settle for ‘proceed’ and ‘project’ and ‘process.’

I remember a specific mistake I made early in my career. I was tasked with presenting a budget of 1255 dollars for a community project. I knew the budget was 25 percent too low. Instead of saying that, I created a spreadsheet that looked so professional, so crisp, that no one questioned the underlying math. I used 5 different colors to categorize the spend. I felt very ‘professional.’ Then, 5 months later, the project ran out of money and the whole thing collapsed. The failure wasn’t the math; the failure was my refusal to be ‘rude’ enough to tell the truth. I had prioritized the aesthetics of the meeting over the success of the mission.

The Power of ‘Close’

Peter R.-M. tells his students that ‘the most important button on any interface is the one that says Close.’ Sometimes you have to close the laptop, stop the ‘professional’ posturing, and just look at the person across from you. He once had a student ask him why adults are so obsessed with making things look ‘official.’ Peter told them it’s because ‘official’ things are harder to criticize. If a memo looks like it was written by a 5-person committee of geniuses, you’re less likely to point out the typo in the first paragraph.

Choosing the Hard Truth

We pretend that the obvious is not happening because the obvious is usually inconvenient. It requires us to change. It requires us to admit that we spent 15 weeks going the wrong way. But the alternative is to spend 45 weeks going the wrong way while wearing a very nice tie and using very impressive words. I think I’d rather be the ‘difficult’ one. I’d rather be the person who points at the 5-system workflow and says, ‘This is broken.’ It might not be ‘professional’ in the way the handbook defines it, but it’s the only way to stay sane in a world that is increasingly comfortable with absurdity.

The green light on my monitor is still glowing. The meeting has 5 minutes left. The director asks if there are any ‘final thoughts.’ I feel the familiar urge to stay silent, to offer a 5-second nod and exit the call. But then I think about Peter R.-M. and his 25 students. I think about the 105 pages of jargon I’ve waded through this week. I unclick the mute button. My heart is at 95 beats per minute now. I clear my throat. I’m going to say the thing. I’m going to tell them that the fourth spreadsheet is a lie. And for the first time in 45 minutes, I feel like I’m actually doing my job.