The Unnatural Rhythm

The plastic of the headset is beginning to fuse with the cartilage of my left ear, a dull throb that pulses at exactly 107 beats per minute. I can see the grid of faces on the monitor-37 small rectangles of human boredom, each lit by the same unnatural blue glow. We are seventeen minutes into a meeting that was scheduled for thirty-seven minutes, and so far, the only thing we have achieved is a collective agreement on the fact that the weather is ‘certainly doing things.’ I am currently staring at a slide titled ‘Strategic Alignment Part 7,’ which contains four bullet points that I have already read in three different emails sent over the last 47 hours. My stomach is currently staging a violent protest because I decided, in a fit of misplaced optimism, to start a new diet at exactly 16:07 today. The phantom smell of a sourdough grilled cheese sandwich is more real to me right now than the ‘deliverables’ being discussed by a vice president whose name I can never quite remember.

I find myself looking at my own thumbnail in the corner of the screen, wondering if I’ve always looked this tired or if the Zoom compression algorithm is just being particularly cruel today. I try to adjust my posture, but my spine feels like a stack of 27 rusted coins.

The Clarity of the Pylon Inspector

In our meeting, however, the goal is the exact opposite. We are here to diffuse responsibility until it becomes a fine mist, impossible to trace or bottle. If the project we are ‘aligning’ on fails to launch by the 27th of next month, no one person will be blamed. We will all simply agree that the ‘synergies weren’t optimized’ and schedule another 47-minute post-mortem to discuss why the 37-minute sync didn’t yield the 17 percent growth we projected. It is a safety mechanism for the mediocre. It is a way to ensure that the risk of individual action is neutralized by the safety of collective indecision.

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The gallery view is a digital panopticon where we are both the prisoners and the guards of each other’s time.

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The Decomposed Dialect

I’ve noticed that the longer the meeting goes, the more the language decomposes. We start using words like ‘architecting’ as a verb and ‘learnings’ as a noun. It’s as if the sheer lack of substance in the conversation forces us to invent a new, more complex dialect just to fill the silence. I am guilty of it too. Three minutes ago, I heard myself say, ‘I think we need to double-click on the narrative arc of the Q7 roadmap,’ and I immediately wanted to go back in time and prevent my own birth. I didn’t even know what I meant. I just knew that the silence was reaching a point where someone might actually have to make a decision, and I stepped in to save us all from that terrifying possibility.

This culture of excessive meeting is a symptom of a deeper, more systemic lack of trust. If a manager trusts their team, they don’t need 17 people to watch a screen share of an Excel sheet. They trust the work is being done. But we don’t live in a world of trust; we live in a world of ‘visibility.’ Visibility is the corporate word for surveillance draped in the fleece of collaboration. We are watched, not to ensure we are working, but to ensure we are participating in the cult of the busy. My hunger is making me cynical, I know. That 16:07 diet start was a mistake. I can feel my blood sugar dropping toward 77, and my ability to tolerate the phrase ‘circle back’ is dropping even faster.

When Fluff Meets Edge

There is a massive disconnect between this performative ‘work’ and the way the real world operates when things actually matter. When a structure fails, or when a person is genuinely harmed by the negligence of a massive, faceless system, the ‘sync’ stops being an option. You cannot ‘align’ your way out of a catastrophic error. In the legal world, specifically when dealing with the aftermath of institutional failure, the fluff is stripped away. This is the realm where a nassau county injury lawyer operates-where the vagueness of a corporate memo meets the hard edge of a courtroom. In that environment, you can’t just ‘socialize’ a mistake. You have to account for it. There is a weight to that kind of work that is entirely absent from the digital pixels currently dancing in front of my eyes.

I watch Chen N. in my mind’s eye again. He is tapping a rivet. He listens for the sound-the specific, clear ring of solid metal versus the dull thud of decay. He is searching for the truth. Meanwhile, on my screen, a colleague is currently explaining why we need to ‘pivoting our lens’ to better capture the ‘millennial zeitgeist’ for a product that is essentially a slightly different version of a spreadsheet plugin. We have 7 minutes left.

The host asks if there are any ‘final thoughts’ or ‘burning questions.’ This is the most dangerous part of the meeting. If someone asks a question, we might be here for another 17 minutes. We all hold our breath. We all stare at our own cameras, projecting an image of thoughtful engagement while internally screaming for the sweet release of the ‘End Meeting for All’ button. One person, a junior analyst who hasn’t yet learned the rules of the game, unmutes. My heart sinks. I look at the clock: 14:37. He asks about the budget for the 2027 rollout.

I find myself wandering off on a tangent in my head, thinking about the 77 different ways I could have spent this time. Instead, I am part of a 37-person human centipede of wasted potential. The junior analyst is being gently shut down by the VP, who uses 107 words to say ‘we’ll discuss that offline.’ ‘Offline’ is the graveyard where inconvenient truths go to die.

I wonder if the bridge inspector ever feels this way. Does Chen N. ever stand on his 147-foot pylon and wish he was in a climate-controlled office, debating the color of a button? Probably. The wind up there is 47 miles per hour on a good day. It’s cold, and the stakes are high. But there is a dignity in the high stakes. There is a clarity in the danger. In here, the only danger is the slow atrophy of the soul. The only risk is that you might look at your reflection in the black screen after the call ends and realize you don’t recognize the person staring back.

The End of the Performance

We finally reach the end. The ‘Leave Meeting’ button glows red, like a beacon of hope. We all wave. Why do we wave? We have been looking at each other for 37 minutes, yet we wave at the end as if we are departing on a great voyage. It’s the final act of the performance. The screen goes dark. I am alone in my room. The diet is still happening, unfortunately. It is now 15:07. I have 67 minutes until I can reasonably justify eating a handful of almonds and calling it a ‘power snack.’

I look at my to-do list. I have 77 unread emails. Three of them are ‘follow-ups’ from the meeting that ended 17 seconds ago. The cycle begins again. We meet to avoid the work, then we work to prepare for the meeting. We are building bridges out of paper and wondering why we feel like we’re drowning. I think I’ll call Chen N. tonight, just to hear a voice that knows what a solid rivet sounds like. I need to know that somewhere, someone is still inspecting the pylons, making sure the world doesn’t actually fall apart while the rest of us are busy ‘aligning’ our lenses.