Habitat for Conformity
đ Tale from the W2
I walked into the monthly department meeting ten minutes late. Omar spotted me and gestured to the empty chair beside him. I slid in as an older gentleman was mid-speech, pitching Habitat for Humanity and asking about everyoneâs volunteer experience.
I was already zoning out.
Then he hit us with the closer:
âItâs dirty, sweaty, and fun!â
Like I needed to cosplay a construction worker to feel noble. I kept my hand down when he asked for volunteers for Saturday. Eventually, he wrapped it up, we gave the obligatory round of applause, and he left.
Next up, the director called on my new manager, Natalie, to go over the anonymous survey results ranking management across a dozen dimensions. Iâd heard it all before, so I stayed focused on my MacBookâquietly building my next Deadbeat Zaddy product while everyone else nodded along.
Then Lillian, my former manager, was summoned to review the production release approval process. When the director opened the floor to questions, I asked about the exact format of test results needed to appease some leadershit layer of the org chart.
After that came the rituals: birthdays, work anniversaries, and unpaid recognitions. Cake slices were passed around.
I found Omar and my old staff engineerâletâs call him Ramiâgossiping, so I joined in. I joked about Kevin, a senior engineer Iâm working with whoâs on a mission to rewrite an entire app unnecessarily.
Kevinâs the kind of dev whoâd rewrite Gmail if you gave him a weekend and a Red Bull.
Rami nodded in solidarityâapparently Kevin once submitted a pull request with 80 files changed. We all cracked up.
âThis is why we come into the office,â I said.
Omar shot back, âI solved a blocker with another dev in 10 seconds today. Gonna use that to justify staying in the office longerâstay away from my wife.â
They donât know Iâm almost done escaping that trap.
Later, I joined the other staff engineers. My peers, technically. All recently promoted. All married. They used to be in shape, but now theyâre rocking dad bods and dark circles under eyesâfor what, an extra $10K to $20K a year? I felt a flicker of pity. They donât even have kids yet.
As I packed up to leave, Lillian approached and asked if I wanted to join my old team for lunch. I lied and said I had to pick up my daughter from daycare.
Itâs not even my day.
Just one of many perks of the Deadbeat Zaddy lifestyle.
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