I worked for a company that was failing once. One day I came in and the doors were locked. That was the end of it. The market had changed. No one had decided to hurt me in particular. It was simply over, and when it happened I felt almost nothing.

Later I worked for a company that made billions of dollars every year. There I was afraid from the time I woke until the time I went to sleep. They let people go without warning, even strong performers and people with critical skills. There was no pattern to it. Like modern Anarcho-tyranny you never knew what your leaders might unleash on you, so were paralyzed and prevented from calmly and thoughfully planning a positive future. They told us to watch our backs and to pick up the slack from the missing guys, because more layoffs were coming and we did not want to be in the crosshairs. Every message from a superior made my stomach tighten. Every request for a meeting felt like the beginning of the end. The successful company was the one that kept you guessing until your body learned to live in a state of low-grade emergency.

The place was run by college-educated women who had no children, by foreign MBAs who counted beans that did not need counting, and by low IQ individuals and retards who had been given authority over matters of feeling and history. This arrangement was considered modern and enlightened. It was one of the most destructive forces a man could face. It was totally and completely soul crushing. The people whose work actually brought in the money were treated as replaceable and slightly suspect. The people who ran the meetings about why the people doing the work needed to feel smaller were treated as essential and were paid more. The actual making of money continued in the background like a machine no one was supposed to mention too loudly.

There were also the grievance programs. These were typically led by low IQ individuals and retards. The high performers, the ones whose labor paid for everything, were required to sit through long meetings in which they were told they were uniquely evil because of the color of their skin. The person telling them this had often arrived at the company after them and was paid more than they were. The programs were demoralizing and a wasteful ideological fantasy. They produced nothing that could be sold and they consumed time and attention that might have been used to do the actual work. The men in the room listened and nodded because that was what was required. It was a very strange way to spend an afternoon in a company that claimed to value efficiency.

The women who carried out the removals were mechanical in their speech and barren in their manner. They had devoted themselves to the corporation and the corporation paid them well for their service. They had no children and they spoke of love and family as if these were subjects that belonged to other people in other times. Their interest was in the smooth running of the machine that employed them. They told whatever the corporation required them to tell. If a man was to be removed, they removed him. If a lie needed to be spoken on the corporation’s behalf, they spoke it without hesitation or visible discomfort. They were reliable in this work.

One Sunday night at eleven o’clock an email arrived. It said only that there would be a meeting on Friday afternoon with an executive. The subject line read “Touch base meeting.” I wrote to my boss and asked what it was about. He wrote back that he did not know anything about it. I wrote to the man who had sent the email. He wrote back, “We’ll discuss it in the meeting. Don’t worry.”

So I went to work on Monday carrying that with me. On Tuesday I saw two other men called into meetings that lasted less than ten minutes. They did not return to their desks. On Wednesday my boss passed me in the hallway and did not meet my eyes. On Thursday I sat in a long room while one of the low IQ individuals explained that the high performers in the room were the problem because of who they were. She had come to the company after me. She was paid more than I was. She had no children.

On Friday afternoon I went to the meeting. The room was windowless and the light came from panels in the ceiling. The woman across the table spoke in a measured voice of changes in the organization and of roles no longer required. She said it was not a judgment upon the work that had been done. She said arrangements would be made. Then she asked if I had any questions. I did not have any questions that could be answered in that room.

A person can live this way for a long time. Many do. After a while something inside him comes loose, not because anyone has struck him, but because he is never allowed to know where he stands or what the rules actually are on any given day. He would rather be in a room with a man who wants to kill him. At least then the situation would be clear and something could be done about it. The modern organization had found a way to make a man participate in his own slow subtraction while calling the process professional development and equity. It was very efficient in its own way.