Compliance

“I just hate my job,” Kevin sighed.”I just hate being here. I hate the work I do. I hate the people I work with. I hate the color of my office. I hate the smell of the place. I hate the sound of the words that people use to describe the work we do. I just hate every aspect of this place.”

 “Just leave,” Chelsea replied. “If you hate it so much, just quit. Don’t come in tomorrow, or ever again.”

“I want to,” Kevin said, grimacing. “But I’m not ready. I haven’t got all my ducks in a row.”

“When will they be in a row?” Chelsea asked.

“Soon, I hope,” Kevin said. “I don’t know how much longer I can stomach this fucking place. Being here sucks the life out of me. It sucks the joy out of living. I know that this is a First World problem. I know other people have it so much worse than I do. But…” He chewed his lip, searching for the words to describe what he was feeling. “I just really hate being here,” he said at last, unable to frame his argument any other way.

 “I don’t know,” Chelsea said. “I like this office stuff. I think it’s nice. I like just chilling out in my cube, listening to music and browsing Facebook. It’s a pretty sweet job.”

 “But don’t you want more than that?” Kevin asked. “I mean… we come in here, and we trade away our lives for a shitty paycheck. We’re basically giving away our painfully finite time in exchange for an abstraction of value that isn’t even worth that much. We will never ever get our lives back. Every second we spend here is a second gone. It’s a second we could have spent living, enjoying life and the world. Doesn’t that make you sick?”

Chelsea thought for a moment. “Not really. I get paid pretty well. And I’m young, I have a lot of time to move up or change jobs or whatever. You’re young too. Why do you think about all this shit? Just be happy where you are.”

Kevin shook his head. “I can’t be happy,” he said. “I can’t be happy doing this fucking stupid meaningless busy-work for the rest of my life. Think about all the other people, all the older people, and how they’re so fixated on retirement. Remember Joanna? She was going to retire and have this great life. But then she had a stroke two months before retirement and she died. Remember Karen? She was going to travel the world with her husband. But then her husband had a massive heart attack and died before she retired.”

“Yeah, but they were old,” Chelsea said. “We’re young. I’m not even thirty. And you’re only like thirty-three?”

"I’m thirty-four,” Kevin sighed. “But that’s not the point. What I’m getting at is that those people used to be young like us. And they felt the same way as you. But then suddenly they were old, and then they were too old to enjoy life without being chained to a desk. I’ve already been here for seven years. Fuck. Just think of all that I could have done in that seven years. But what have I done instead? I’ve traded away my hours, my life, for a paycheck. I haven’t contributed anything to society. I haven’t done anything.”

“You do compliance work,” Chelsea smiled. “That’s important.”

 “Is it?” Kevin said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “Think about how much money they spend on all this compliance bullshit. Millions of dollars every quarter gets burned up in the compliance bureaucracy. I haven’t crunched the numbers, but I have a strong suspicion that we spend a lot more on compliance than this company ever lost from researchers misusing funds. It’s fucking stupid. Our compliance work is a joke. We’re leeches, sucking up research dollars that would be better spent fighting cancer or whatever.”

“Just leave then,” Chelsea said, rolling her eyes. “I like working here. It’s easy. I get paid well. And I get to take long lunches. I don’t know why you can’t be happy like everyone else.”

“I don’t know either,” Kevin mumbled. “I wish I could, but I just can’t.”

He let her words sink into his brain for a few moments. It was true, everyone else in the office really was happy. They loved their work and believed in what they were doing. Kevin didn’t understand why he couldn’t go with the herd, why he couldn’t love the mindless, meaningless work as much as everyone else. "I really just hate being here,” he said at last. “I need to get the fuck out of here.”