Just How Much Do You Hate Work?

“Severance” asks how far you would go for work-life balance.

Britt Lower in "Severance," now streaming on Apple TV+
Photo: Severance on Apple TV+

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I remember dying to turn 14 years old. Thirteen was the showy milestone, the birthday equivalent of a moral victory against childhood—I was officially a teenager and newly confident in watching PG-13 movies—but 14 was the real prize. Things would happen at 14, and the world would meaningfully change for the better. I could finally get a job.

In those months before turning 14, I fantasized about how much I’d be able to work, how much that labor could earn, and what I could potentially buy. The math was ambitious, naive, and fun: $5.15 minimum wage, multiplied by 12 … no, 16 … no, 20 hours per week, multiplied by four weeks a month, which would, holy shit, give me $412. The sum left me in amazement and eager to run the math again, changing variables to account for the chance that I might make $6 an hour or work 25 hours a week.

My fantasy came crashing down when I started my first job at the Taco Bell on Warren Avenue in Detroit, Michigan. It started even before I arrived, when my mom yelled at me from down the block because I was dribbling my basketball on my walk to work. (Ball was life, so I figured I could practice dribbling on the five-block walk.)

“You’re going for work, not for play,” she told me. And so I learned the dichotomy: Work is work, and life is life. The two are separate, and they shouldn’t meet.

That summer, I toiled through the worst job I have ever had in my life.

From standing all day, to customer abuse, to cleaning feces-covered public bathrooms, I worked harder at 14 years old than at any other point in my life since. I don’t know what was worse: The misery of working at Taco Bell, or reading my first paycheck and my libertarian dad using it as an opportunity to lecture me about taxes and government overreach. I hated every moment of work, earned half of what I had expected, and spent all my nonworking hours dreading when I would inevitably have to go back. If I had the choice to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Taco Bell from my memory, I would have done it in a second.

That’s how bad work can be. How bad work can be is also the premise of the new series, Severance, that premiered last week on Apple TV+. And from what I’ve seen so far—only three episodes—you should get started now.

The series follows Mark (Adam Scott), who works at a megacorp that offers a procedure called “severance.” Employees who undergo it have their memories bifurcated into two parts: work, where they have no memory of the outside world; and outside of work, where they have no memory of the office.

Photo: Severance on Apple TV+

At the start of the series, Mark, who is already “severed,” is the guide to a newly severed employee, Helly—the problem is that Office Helly decides she wants to quit. Immediately. Posthaste.

But Helly’s outside self keeps coming to work. This paradox—Helly’s desire to come to work and disgust at being there—raises questions around alienation, exploitation, and abuse. But the most interesting ones are about what personhood means to each of us. Are the inside and outside versions of Helly two different people? Can you choose to do something against your own will? Are we defined by our memories?

Severance takes exploitation to its sci-fi extreme, and the Black Mirror–esque psychological drama challenges your relationship with work and how far you would go for the elusive “work-life balance.” You’ll also question what kinds of conditions—at work and at home—could lead someone to so willingly disconnect their personal life from their professional one.

I can guess where Severance is going—a spreading sense of regret among the severed, a traitorous employee who would rather choose the blue pill and stay in the Matrix, a quest to escape the rat wheel and the nefarious megacorp—but the premise of the show offers enough that I care less about those big moments and more about the quiet ones in between that give insight into the daily dread and overwhelmingness of work. These days, I don’t even believe in “work-life balance” because I’m so bad—it’s more comforting to call it a myth than aim to achieve it.

But I don’t wonder what working conditions might make someone decide to sever memories of their labor from their life. I learned that at 14. Suspension of disbelief won’t be a problem.

***

My favorite reader email this week came from Jennifer, who simply said, “I don’t know if I hate him, but Joss Whedon really broke my heart.” Yup, I hear you (and everyone else who emailed last week with their celebrity love turned heartbreak.) The heartbreak is even harder than the hatred.

To run with the theme, this week’s book giveaway is A Minute to Think: Reclaim Creativity, Conquer Busyness, and Do Your Best Work, by Juliet Funt. It’s a guide to avoiding burnout, and although I’m convinced burnout is more of a societal problem than an individual one, maybe this book will help you feel more in control. And that’s something, right? Just send me an email telling me the worst job you’ve ever had. I’ll send the book to the first person who hits my inbox. You can reach me at humansbeing@theatlantic.com, or find me on Twitter at @JordanMCalhoun.

Jordan Calhoun is a contributing writer at The Atlantic.