#this is about taylor swift

[redwinephannie]

“She’s so unproblematic 😌” no sweetheart she’s just a privileged white girl who refuses to speak on important humanitarian issues because she believes her reputation is more important than peoples lives. Please learn the difference.

[cerealf0rlunch]

considering getting into consumerism. it seems fun. so much novelty in this world that I haven't been throwing money at.

[taylorrepdetective]

Story time.

One of my all time favorite movies is Office Space. If you know that movie, you will be familiar with the Red Stapler:

For me, the red stapler is a perfect symbol of the ridiculousness of office life. While the stapler itself doesn’t perfectly symbolize the performative nature of much of office work (water cooler talk, networking, trying to look busy all the time, dressing the part,) it has become a symbol of the movie, which captures perfectly the disillusionment with and existential dread we have about the workplace, whether you’re a waitress, lab tech, engineer, accountant, or dare I say, entertainer.

So quite a few years back, I suffered a fairly debilitating work burnout, accompanied by some pretty dire personal stuff going on at the same time and one of my coping mechanisms was to take on a newer, “better” attitude about my job. To quote the guy from fight club: “you are not your job”. That became my mantra. I quit the job I hated, and used the good will and connections I had established over years of good, hard work to get a new job. They loved me! They gave me lots of money, a good title and a boss who was in a different country, an 11 hr flight and 9 hrs in the future away. Armed with my new attitude, I bought myself a red Swingline stapler, which was entirely staple-free, and placed it on my desk to serve as a reminder that none of it matters, and I set about doing as little work as possible for as long as I could get away with it. No one noticed the symbolism of my red stapler, but it made me smile and helped keep me going.

One day, we hired someone new. This girl was kind of a “cool girl”. Like, you could tell she wasn’t your typical office worker. And then one day she walked past my desk and said “I love your stapler” with a wink. Ah! Someone gets it! It made me so pleased. So pleased that I still remember it and tell this story from time to time. Someone saw my joke, and I imagined they had a small window into my outlook on life and maybe they felt the same. I felt seen.

So this job sort of got weirder and weirder over the course of a year. I started getting lay-off vibes toward the end of that year. I had less and less to do, I barely showed up (I was hybrid before there was a word for it), and I was pretty sure the products we were working on had little to no value. My boss was on the other side of the world and didn’t seem to care what I did. And still my stapler sat. It was biding its time for its big moment, but I didn’t know that then.

So finally, one year and one day after I got this job, I got that dreaded meeting invite with HR first thing in the morning, and I sighed and said well I guess I’m getting laid off, and went in and yes, I and 65% of my colleagues were done and I needed to leave today. Those who had been here a year would get a generous severance. Oh how fortunate for me that I had been there one year and one day! I said “ok but you know no one else here knows how to do what I do and I’m afraid the product is going to suffer because my work is very important” (it actually was, just not 40 hrs a week important) and they said “yes we know, and we were hoping you’d become a part-time consultant for us” and I said “sure I can do that, but my rate is twice as much as I’m currently getting paid” and they said “we understand and that’s fine” and so I left my layoff meeting with a severance package, a full bonus, and a promise of a consulting contract. Later that day, they called and said “so we have been informed that the work you’re doing is actually super important right now and we’re wondering if you’d continue working as you have been for the next week while we work out your contract. We promise to pay you as soon as the contract is signed.” Well dear reader, I sat there and looked at my red stapler and thought of poor Milton getting his desk moved into the basement and they stopped paying him without telling him and I did the smoking duck head shake and I said “sure!” while mumbling I could set the building on fire.

So I sat there and worked for free for a week while they fucked around with my contract and then they paid me for a month at double my usual pay to do the very little work I needed to do while I looked for a new job, got one almost immediately and gave 2 weeks notice.

On my last day, as I was leaving I took a Post It note and wrote “For you. Good luck!” stuck it to the red stapler and left it on the desk of the office cool girl who would Get It. Later she sent me a LinkedIn message thanking me and said it made her laugh.

I wish I could say we got together and now we’re married or something, but alas, this is a true story not fanfiction, so I never saw her again.

But the lessons of the red stapler remain, and I am now in a much healthier place with my employment (and personal life,) somewhere between being too-invested-so-I-will-burnout:

And being this guy:

Sometimes I do miss my red stapler though.

[allulily]

i love filtering tags. i don't wanna see that so i won't be

[counterspellthisyoucasual]

“You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me” this “tortured poets department” that, babes, your grandmother was a tv personality and your father is the head of the investment division of Bank of America, wtf are you on about??

[rosalesbeausderholle]

Meeting up with my best friend next week 😊🤗❤️😘

[richkidcityfriends]

let people like things 2024 (never happening apparently)

[viivdle]

purchases make everything better

suddenly i'm motivated to write 50 fics and jump and dance

[afterplaidshirtdays]

she’s never beating the witch allegations

[anna-scribbles]

if you imagine an animatic hard enough it should come true

[notdefendingtaylor]

billboard chose VIOLENCE on a random monday

[inquirenorth]

some very famous people write songs as if they’ve only just learned what a “rhyme” is

[helpimstuckinafandom]

I'M FUCKING CRYING LMAOOO

[frankierotwinkdeath]

Y’all want Taylor Swift to be gay so bad but you won’t even write femslash about her

[hawberries]

but the rain is always gonna come if you're standing with me

[notsopersonalcharlie]

hey people if you dislike something for taste reasons there’s literally no reason for you to make someone else dislike it. just cause i don’t like mayo doesn’t mean I’m going to tell you to stop buying it