The most disturbing thing about my job is not the work, it’s the acting

I used to think I was stressed because of the workload. But now I realise the actual work is maybe 40 percent of the problem. The rest is the performance. Pretending to care about things that don’t matter. Pretending urgency when nothing is urgent. Pretending productivity while sitting in meetings that should have been emails. And the worst part is everyone knows. Everyone knows it’s fake. Everyone knows it’s inefficient. Everyone knows it’s draining. But no one breaks character. So we all keep acting. And somehow the biggest skill in corporate life is not competence. It’s how convincingly you can pretend to be busy.