Real Life Manager Gives A Breakdown On 'Severance'
Image Source: IMDb
Severance, produced by Red Hour Productions and Fifth Season and airing on AppleTv+, is in the midst of its second season. It follows the lives of several office workers working for the powerful and mysterious Lumon company, which requires their employees to undergo an invasive neurological procedure known as Severance. Said process effectively separates their lives into two: the Innies, who work on Lumon's increasingly sinister projects, and the Outies who try to live their normal lives out of office, all the while struggling to reconcile half of their lives being cut away. When mysterious happenings begin to in the outside lives, they begin to investigate, digging into the dark underbelly of the corporate world.
Like Mad Men meets Black Mirror, the dark comedy and almost over-the-top evilness exhibited by Lumon make it easy enough to give a rueful laugh at and go about your ostensibly non-dystopian-esque office job. But Alison Green of Ask A Manager cautions us not to be quite so blasé.
Warning: Contains spoilers for Severance Season 1 and 2.
“Severance highlights the sinisterness of corporate culture,” Green notes, “but many of those elements exist in real life, and we’re all so used to them that we don’t think about them within an explicitly sinister framework. We’d probably be better off if we did.”
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The show often portrays the punishment and reward of its employees in the oddest, most disturbing ways possible, from being made to repeat a thousand lines of a Compunction Statement until considered reticent to Lumon to being given a plate of waffles and an elaborate animal-themed lap dance. Green notes that while of course, such concepts are highly unlikely to exist in our modern workplaces, the sentiments behind them aren't so far off.
“There is a thread of [punishment] that connects to a lot of people in real-life jobs, which is the underlying belief that it’s okay to force employees to comply with something they object to, that it’s okay to beat them down mentally until they accept it. They’re not going to make you repeat a weird statement or phrase 1,000 times, but they will steep you in a culture that, over time, degrades your spirit.”
Image Source: US Weekly
At the end of Season 1, the Innies discovered a specific program known as the Overtime Contingency that allows them to exist and retain their Innie personalities while outside the company. Upon utilizing this Contingency, they quickly blew the whistle on the company's misdeeds. Following this, Lumon has started Season 2 with some quick and highly insincere damage control. Green notes:
”Well, it’s a complete [expletive]...They’re being told, ‘You’re the saviors of the company, and we’re so grateful.’ They know that that’s not true. That use of double-talk happens all the time at work in real life whenever it’s in the interest of the company to smooth over some incident and move forward. Pretending that everyone’s on the same page, even though everyone knows they’re not, when it’s in the company’s interest to pretend like they’re all playing nice, happens all the time.”
Furthermore, the existence of the Overtime Contingency itself is something of a weapon to be wielded over the employee's head. “Oh, the Overtime Contingency is such a great mirror of what people are increasingly dealing with in real life. It’s so common for people to have jobs where they’re at home relaxing with their families but at any moment they could be called upon to switch into their work persona.”
Image Source: The Mary Sue
This does bring to mind the phenomenon known as “quiet quitting” or “soft quitting” which especially has gained traction in the last decade as a term to describe worker dissatisfaction. The idea—that employees will completely disconnect from their jobs following their shifts, refuse to answer phone calls or emails from their employers out of the office, and will show up at meetings or work exactly on time and no earlier—has gained support among employees as well as scorn from some employers, who maintain that such behavior displays poor work ethic and lack of effort.
And despite the workplace abuse, it's not unusual for an employee to hold a company in high regard, despite evidence to the contrary.
“We’ve all worked in jobs where people’s loyalty to an organization’s bad practices or bad actors outlasts their employment with the company…For a lot of people, to feel good about work, which accounts for a huge portion of our waking hours and identities, it’s important to feel like you’re engaged in something good, on the side of the righteous. That doesn’t just get turned off with a switch when you leave a job. In a lot of cases, it should, but that mindset is really powerful, even when no one’s paying us for it anymore.”
Still, while it may seem hopeless and the odds definitely tend to be stacked against them, an employee isn't helpless in their role.
“You can actually make much better decisions for yourself and be more likely to get the outcomes you want if you really understand what’s happening. Realizing, my input on this doesn’t really matter, but this ally I have in this other department who does have influence would matter, is powerful. Once you understand those dynamics, you can get a lot more done…”
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Source: Vulture
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