A Study in Grey
We worked for the same corporate dream machine. Different acronyms, similar robotic leadership yet very different takes on the unbearable banality of it all. My funny little department had a bit more noise and a few open blinds. His was a touch more inflexible. Clearer desks, straighter lines, pristine rows of recycled ambition and freshly vacuumed indifference. We’d occasionally chat a bit at the coffee machine, but I don’t think he knew my name.
He was exactly what you’d expect from someone who’d always worked in a corporate environment. A little bit like a living LinkedIn profile. The kind of guy who thought flexible working depended on the last sentence uttered by the CEO. If the strategy said “ocean,” he’d drown on command.
He loved going above and beyond. On every project. Every call. Every interaction. If he wasn’t bleeding performance metrics, he was emailing after-hours updates, copy-pasting the same enthusiasm he reserved for his 2% annual pay rises: “Generous, considering the economic climate.”
My god, how did he become such a man. Married, somehow. Two kids. Which meant, once upon a time, he had navigated intimacy. Or maybe he just project-managed his way through it. Gantt charts, baby milestones, KPI: conception.
He was easy to dislike, unless you were in management. Optics were everything to him, provided 99% of the effort pointed upwards in the vertical hierarchy. Tone-deaf wasn’t a flaw. For him, it was default firmware.
It won’t shock you to hear that he got promoted regularly. Laterally, mostly. A breadcrumb trail of titles designed to placate. He didn’t notice. He was just thrilled someone at the top remembered his name. Once, a senior VP made a joke with him. His eyes lit up, you’d think he’d been knighted.
Seeing him in action made me want to roll my eyes. I wanted to. But I couldn’t.
I just felt… sad.
There was something devastating about watching a grown man mistake attention for acceptance. He wore his grey suit like it came with personality included. Somewhere out there, his family probably offered him something real. Chaotic warmth, perhaps even love, but here he was. Smiling into the void for a salary and an award made of nothing.
He was a walking case study in performative loyalty. But now, all I saw was a husk that used to dream. He’d given himself away piece by piece, and what was left? PowerPoint decks. Polished shoes. A chair at meetings where his opinion was never actually required.
And then, just as quickly, the sadness passed.
He was strutting back to his desk after another minor public validation. A bounce in his step that died within seconds. Self worth evaporating like steam off stale coffee.
That’s when it happened.
A young grad approached him. New, eager. Eyes wide with the kind of questions that once belonged to people like us. She asked him something. I didn’t catch what she said, but she was enthusiastic.
He didn’t even look at her properly. Waved her off with a clipped, arrogant tone. Something cruel, barely masked as dismissive professionalism.
And there it was, the real engine behind the machine.
This wasn’t just someone shaped by corporate culture. This was a man living in the echo of his own inferiority complex. He was masking it in policies and empty status. Punching down to feel tall. Treating others in reflection to the hollow space inside himself.
The pity receded. But not the clarity.
He wasn’t just tragic. He was an asshole.
But maybe the saddest kind.
Not because of how he was treated, but because of who he had chosen to become in response.
I went back to my screen. Same despair. Different acronym.
But I liked to think I still knew who I was.
He didn’t.
A couple of years later we were both made redundant with a list of others. I never met him again. We just went in different directions. The enthusiastic colleague? She does his job now. It all continues to be meaningless. Which is actually quite a nice realization.
Grey suit, hollow smile
Echoes climb the ladder fast
Pity turns to truth.