I was just twenty years old when I first landed my job. At that time, I had recently graduated from college with a degree in my name, so finding a job so quickly was considered to be very impressive. I wouldn't considered myself very handsome, but I was decent looking and well-liked around my social circles.
I have been working in the exact same company for fifteen years, and if there's one word I could describe my experience, it's tortures. Before I joined the company, I was an energetic fool, I was eager to start working as soon as possible. Long hours? I could take it. Work early? I could do that too. But not even a week goes by since I first started working that I felt something was off. Almost everything was dumped onto my desk. I thought it was a mistake, maybe someone with the exact same name as me was supposed to be doing all of this work. It was a pretty common name, after all.
"Excuse me," I said to one of my supervisors one morning, carefully balancing a teetering stack of report papers in my hands. "I think there's been some sort of mix-up. All of these assignments are labeled for me, but I just started… So is it possible that someone else with my name is supposed to handle these."
My supervisor, a middle-aged man in a suit and red tie had a permanent scowl etched into his face, he looked up from his phone. "No mistake," he said bluntly. "We hired you to handle these kinds of work. You said in your interview that you don't mind a little extra work."
Litte? I hardly called that stack of papers, little. I admit, I did say that I could take on anything in my interview—but I didn't imagine that I was going to do that much workload on my first day. I wanted to protest, and try to show that the work they gave me was nearly impossible for me to do alone, but he had already turned his attention back to his phone.
In the end, I managed to complete it all, but by the time I finished, it had already been mid-night. My apartment wasn't even close to where the company's building was, so I had to wait for another train to arrive. I was already exhausted, both mentally and physically, that I slept in the train immediately when it arrived, and if it weren't for a sweet old lady that woke me up, I would have missed my stop.
After a few weeks, I managed to settle into a routine that allowed me to finish my work before heading home. It wasn't perfect, but it got the job done and let me leave on time. I'd arrive early, skip my breaks, and do the biggest files first. Lunch was a simple granola bar I kept stashed in my desk drawer, paired with a thermos filled black coffee I brought from home.
I'd eat while typing, sometimes even dipping the granola bar into the coffee to soften it—less crunch, faster chewing. Efficiency was everything. By the time I finally clocked out, I was drained but at least free... for a little while, anyway.
Then came the next day. The same grind. The same cycle.
I had grown used to the workload, but after the first few months passed, the tasks they assigned to me started to piled up more. My superiors must have seen how efficient I was with my work compare to the others, and so they decided to increase my work.
At first, I tried to rationalize it—maybe it was a busy year? —but it wasn't. They were doing this deliberately. They kept adding more to my plate, and to make things worse, they started to set strict deadlines if I don't submit on time, although I wasn't quite sure what the consequences were. They didn't exactly told me what would happen if I missed a deadline. That was until I finally learned it— not directly, though—but I overheard a conversation between my supervisor and a colleague. He was berating her in the break room for delivering a report a day late. I think her name was Kobayashi or something, but I couldn't be certain. I rarely, if ever talked to my colleagues in the office.
That day, I was taking a short break on my desk, drinking coffee from my thermos when I heard the back-and-forth exchange between them.
"This isn't the first time, you know. How many times do I have to remind you that deadlines aren't suggestions, Kobayashi."
"I—I understand, but the clients—they kept changing their requirements, and I just—"
"And you didn't think to communicate that? We're all on a thin line here, not just you. When you miss deadlines, once, or even twice, it makes the entire department looks incompetent."
"I was just trying to get it done as fast as I could. I stayed late—"
"Staying late doesn't matter if the work isn't done on time. Do you think the client cares how many hours you put in? The only thing they care about is results."
"It won't happen again, I promise."
"It better not. Because if it does, you don't have to worry about staying late anymore—you'll be staying home."
When I heard his footsteps getting louder, I instinctively froze. My heart was racing, but I knew I couldn't afford to look as if I was eavesdropping. When I heard him exiting the doorway, I had already shifted in my seat, and I was facing towards my monitor, and started typing furiously on my keyboard—even though my document was a blank page.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him glanced in my direction. I made a show of taking a long sip of coffee, and my face glued to the screen. A casual act, I hoped. He paused, maybe for a second too long, before muttering something under his breath and leaving the room.
As soon as I heard the door click shut, I let out a sigh. I wasn't sure if he noticed me or not, but I didn't dare move for another few minutes, just in case.
That wasn't the only punishment they would give us if we missed the deadline. Compare to the other punishments I had witness, the one Kobayashi received was considerably mild.
There was a particular colleague from a different department I was familiar with. We weren't friends—more like acquaintances. We exchanged pleasantries when we crossed paths, or talked about our work lives in passing whenever we were in the elevator.
Then one day, he just... disappeared. No goodbye. No note. His name was scrubbed from the schedule, and it wasn't until I overheard some colleagues gossiping that I learned what happened: he had failed to submit a huge project on time. It was for a wealthy client, so I understood why they were so impatient. Still, it felt jarring to see someone vanish so abruptly.
A few weeks later, another colleague, Hirofumi Takahata—a nice guy from my own department—was called into the supervisor's office. We all knew something was off, as he had been working late every night, but he hadn't mentioned anything about a looming deadline or what the supervisor had to say.
When he returned from the meeting, his face was pale. He didn't say a word, just sat at his desk, staring blankly at his screen. However, a few hours ago, I overheard the supervisor telling him, in a voice louder than usual, "If you don't get it together, we might have to rethink your position here."
The tension around him seemed to change after that. He stopped making eye contact with everyone, and his usual friendly demeanor disappeared completely. He began to have dark bags under his eyes, and he was overworking himself for hours, to the point of exhaustion.
I couldn't even recognize him anymore. A week goes by, and I thought—I—I hoped—that he'd recover, that Hirofumi would finally go back to normal, but when I arrived at the office, I didn't see him. He was gone. No farewell party. No explanation. He just disappeared. His desk was empty and his name was wiped out from the data base. Nobody really talked about his name again after that.
Life would move on, as always. The office didn't stop for Hirofumi, or for anyone else who left the job. Deadlines would be set, phones would still ring, and the stacks of papers delivered only grew each day that passed. It didn't take a genius to know that in this company, people were as replaceable as paperclips.
Nobody here gives a damn about you or your feelings, what matters is efficiency and results. It's a simple rule to follow, but this is simply reality—and reality can sometimes be very cruel.
As for me, I stayed with the company for several more years to come, though the effects on my mental and physical health slowly worsened over time.
My fifth-year anniversary of being with the company had approached faster than I had imagined. Everything had felt like a blur, and time seems to move forward so quickly that I hadn't realized that five years had passed by. Nothing had changed much in the office, aside from a few individuals who were either fired or let go, I remained in the same cubicle as before. Efficiency had become a second nature, a rhythm I followed without thinking. The routine I had come up with kept me afloat, though barely. I'd still arrived early, skipped breaks, and worked late into the night. The stress I felt were torturous, but a few aspirins were able to relieve me temporarily from the pain, before it would eventually resurface.
I caught my reflection in the bathroom mirror one evening, and noticed the first streaks of grey had appeared in my hair. It honestly startled me. I was only 25 by then, but I guess the stress must have caught onto me. Moreover, my back was always in a constant pain from sitting in the same position for hours on end, and no matter how much I stretched, nothing seemed to help.
The company gave me a certificate for my service—a flimsy piece of cardstock with my name printed in bold letters—and a half-hearted handshake from the department head. "Congratulations," he said with a mundane expression, before eventually walking off to his next meeting. I never really bothered looking at it again, I simply tucked it away into my drawer and didn't show it to anyone else. I didn't like to brag—and honestly, that thing wasn't even something to be worth bragging about.
My tenth anniversary would eventually arrive. I felt suffocating, like a bird in a cage. My entire body began to grow weaker, and my back pain continued to worsen. I had started to take various drugs, particularly painkillers, on my eighth year to relief my back pain along numerous other problems I had.
Most of my original colleagues were gone, they either left or were quietly dismissed from their positions. I was one of the few who managed to remain in the company, others began to called us 'veterans', although I never really liked that title. It makes me feel old, and I had just turned 30. Work felt the same, tight deadlines, and my workload increased. I rarely leave my desk, or even went to the break room. I still kept my granola bars in the same desk drawer as where I put my medications, and my coffee hasn't changed a bit. It was still the same brand, the same taste—the same, bitter taste for over ten years.
My colleagues—the one that had stayed long enough to get to know me—avoided any eye contact, and the new ones were all wary of me since the beginning. I could tell just by looking at their faces that they were scared. I was a grim reminder of their own fates. I was hated, and admired, but I didn't really care. If there's one thing I've learn since I started to work here, is that I prefer to work alone, and the supervisor didn't seem to have any problems with that. He came by to my department that afternoon to do his usual roundabout inspections, and he patted me on the back, congratulating me on becoming an ideal 'role model' for the other employees. I should have felt proud of myself, but I was so tired to even care.
I just wanted to go home. I thought at that moment.
Then, the present day had arrived. My face had changed so much that I barely recognized myself in the mirror. The dark bags under my eyes made me look like I hadn't slept in years. Wrinkles had begun to showed to up on my forehead and around my face, and my hair had more grey than black now. A young coworker, one of the new recruits this year had once asked if I was planning to retire soon. I wanted to laugh, but the joke stung. I guess I had really let myself go.
The pain was still there, but it had worsened to the point where I could barely walk without using my cane. The medications I used to rely on weren't as effective as before. They didn't ease the pain like they used to, and I had to take double the amount if I wanted any relief.
Nobody acknowledged the milestone this time. Most of my colleagues, the remaining ones that I first met when I first arrived here had all disappeared. There was always a new face each month in my department. I didn't even bother remembering their names anymore. In the past, I used to try and get to know them better, give them useful tips and helped them whenever they have problems. Now, I couldn't remember most of my colleagues' names, but I didn't really care. They're not going to stick around for long, so why should I bother remembering their names?
There were no certificates this time, no handshake, not a 'thank you' from the supervisor. He must be too busy plowing with one of his many mistresses right now to even remember his reliable pawn.
15 years of hard work, and this is what I got in the end.
I had accomplished nothing but become a loyal slave to this company. Killing myself right now wouldn't even affect the productivity of this dang business, I was just another gear in the machine. Turning and spinning the same direction as I did for years.
What a joke I had become.
I thought that I could make something of myself here—become someone worth respecting. Now I was just a hollow shell of myself. I was 35 years old, single and still virgin. If my younger self could see me now, he'd probably laugh—or cry. Honestly, I'm not even sure which would be worse.
I'm a fucking loser.
Dad was right. I wouldn't amount to anything. He was right. He was always right. Damn him.
I'm just so drained now. Just—so tired. I—I don't want to do this anymore.
And then, something happened: I felt my chest tighten. At first, I thought it was just another usual—the side effect of all of the coffee I drank, and the meals I skipped. It was nothing new. My body was complaining like it always does. I always tried my best to ignore it, and without any medications to ease the pain, I had to learn to endure it as best as I could before it would eventually go away.
But this time, it was different. The pain wasn't just coming from my chest; it was spreading across my entire body. My arms, neck, and back felt like they were on fire. I had to stopped what I was doing and put my hand on my chest, taking a few deep breathes to try and stopped whatever was going on with me.
'This is nothing.' I told to myself.
But the more I tried to ignore, the worse it got. The pain felt unbearable.
Maybe… Maybe I should lay down for a while. I'm sure they wouldn't mind me taking a nap for 10 minutes. Yes, that might be a good idea.
All I need… all I want… is to sleep.