Workplace Mind-Loss: See It, Say It, Sort It

Andrew 

I had this job. Had it – I’ve still got it. It’s slightly different now, what I do, but when I started, or at least when I’m talking about, my job was to research and write reports about companies, markets, regulatory systems, business conditions, key individuals in businesses and regulatory systems, and things including elections, currency devaluations, sanctions, and the chances of being invaded by China or Russia, or unexpectedly bombed by North Korea or Iran, that fell under the loose category of ‘political risks’. There were essentially two types of information. One is what anyone could find from Googling; if they were really keen, they could do some public record searches, read company accounts filings and disclosures to stock exchanges. All done on computer. Nobody has to leave their desk. In extreme cases, we would search a paid-for database which showed things like criminal proceedings or insolvencies in jurisdictions which don’t automatically put all this stuff online. This was what I did. I searched the internet for information, then I wrote it up using my own words, like a school project. Then there was the information that the company I worked for claimed it dealt in. High-value, sensitive, commercial data. Not bin-digging phone-hacking or bugging businessmen’s hotel rooms, but the type of information that not many people know, and would take a major effort to find out, including having face-to-face conversations with people, and actually going to locations far from the desk. Is the committee that awards building permits in Tashkent, for example, effectively if covertly controlled by the owners of real estate company A, or real estate company B?  This is what we sold, but as long as I worked there, never actually did. 

I’d studied some sociology, some psychology, some pol-sci, political economy, classic liberal stuff. I could see when things we did - activities and practices – were kind of rituals, workplace rituals. And I realised – or at least, it seemed clear to me -  that the substantive content I was producing did not matter at all. Nobody was reading it. The people who were paying the company I worked for to make these reports, did not read them. Thirty, forty thousand dollars. The only feedback I ever got, either from the editors and directors at my company or from the client via my directors, was about the appearance of the document. The colors I’d used in the charts. The placement of sub-headings. Formatting. Sometimes they would get a 20,000-word document and they’d come back and say, could you add another couple of maps? 

Or they would want more charts, more graphs. My directors always wanted that. More pictures. Can we not find a non-textual way of presenting these findings, they would suggest. Tabulate / graphic / dashboarding? 

After a while – maybe 18 months or so at this, when it was clear that the only things anyone was even remotely interested in was how it looked, I started fucking with it. 

I started with things that I figured I would be able to explain as innocent mistakes if anyone saw them. It wouldn’t look good, but it would look like I had screwed something up, not deliberately sabotaged my own work. Maybe the editors would be instructed to keep an extra close eye on what I sent them, maybe I would have to go on a corporate standards training course. In a project about the outlook for the alcohol-free spirits market in Latvia, for example, I included a page of statistical information, repackaged as pie charts and bar graphs, about Lithuania, clearly marked Lithuania.

I waited.

I sweated. I lost sleep.

I drank. I did drugs. I worked out, a lot.

I still don’t know whether I hoped it would be found, or hoped it wouldn’t, maybe you can tell me that-

- (I said nothing)

We submitted the final report. The company was paid. The client came to our office for a formal follow-up discussion in which we talked about future work we might do for them if they decided to go ahead with their low-alcohol Latvian investment plans. Days … weeks… nothing. Nothing.

Next one. Same kind of ‘mistake’ but bigger, worse. Less easy to explain. And on and on.

-You must have known you were taking a risk. You could have lost your job.

I know. I mean, I know now. At the time…I guess I didn’t think that far ahead. Or maybe I must have thought, I’m young, I’m smart, I’ll get another job, but looking at it now it looks like a mad risk doesn’t it

-That’s not really the kind of language-

Was it a cry for help?

-A bid for attention

I must have been losing my fucking mind.