Were ya born in a barn?

No, but I work in one.

(Note: When I started writing for this blog, I truly wanted to adhere to the rule of "no discussing work [except in the vaguest of terms]," so I hope this is vague enough. But seriously, who can help it? For 10 hours a day, I'm bound to The Company by either work or commuting to work. That's a good chunk of time, considering the next biggest chunk involves me unconscious and drooling on a pillow. Work has become such a main part of my life that the creeping majority of who I call friends are also co-workers or former co-workers. How can I not write about this place when it consumes a healthy fraction of my day and therefore my daydreams?)

I was born one of those fortunate girls who doesn't have a horse face. I don't gather in gossipy hen parties. Nor am I a cow (well, hopefully not too much of one). I was born in a hospital, not a drafty barn. I drive a car, not pull a wagon. I take showers in a bathroom, instead of getting hosed down 'round back. I eat with a knife and fork, not my face.

And yet The Company treats me and my colleagues like cattle. Well-liked cattle, but still...we're not even free range.

First of all, the main feature (Gasp! Not our personalities?) is the Barn Door. Our ex-Big Wig had it installed to muffle the sound from the rest of the office, but really it's a toy he swings open and shut like a two-year-old when he takes guests around for the grand tour. No one simply calls it "a door" anyway; it's the Barn Door. How demeaning.

And not long ago, an epiphany sprung up and hit me: the whole room is feng-shui'd like a stable. Desks lined up against the longest walls of the room; each pen, er, work station separated by a partition; the floor, were it a few shades lighter, would almost look like 2-D hay. And maybe I've been in this room too long, but it's starting to look good in the yummy sense.

We even work on a regimented schedule, like farm critters do:

08:00 Work begins
10:00 First 15-minute break begins
12:00 Lunch

Lunch at noon is when they herd us out to the lunchroom to graze, chew the cud, and cluck around.

12:30 Resume work

We head back to our pens so The Company can keep milking the effort out of us.

15:00 Second 15-minute break begins

But every now and then, we're given a treat, like a birthday cake, barbeque, or bonbons, and we all hoof it down to the lunchroom to collect our prize. The Company loves us! we exclaim. But in another 15 minutes, it's back to work. No grazing here for long.

17:00 End of the work day

After a few more hours pass, The Company quits milking and riding us for the day. The pigs, cows, cocks, chickens, sheep, asses, and mother hens all ride off into the sunset.

But we're not unruly animals. We're people—with families, not herds; homes, not coops; kids, not offspring. We'll eat our dinner off fine china, not out of a trough. So why is it that for eight hours a day, five days a week, we're treated like animals? Is it that human beings as a group are untamable, unpredictable, and unkempt? Do we really require dress codes, regimented break and meal times, and memos to keep us civil in the corporate barnyard? Does The Company, and others like it have so little faith in us working responsibly between 8 am and 5 pm that they use the laws of the animal kingdom to "behaviourly modify" us?

Cakes and sugar cubes can only satisfy the beasts for so long before the beasts get restless in their pens. Acknowledge us as humans, damn it!

If Jane Schmo needs a smoke break 14 times a day, let her have it—a good person will make up that missed time. If John Doe needs to get to a non-work appointment, let 'em. If my stomach growls and my work is caught up to a reasonable point, let me head out for lunch at 11:37 (because I'm hungry) instead of 12 noon (because The Company says so). I don't want a parking lot anally ordered into who-gets-what-spot or segregated from the "outer lot beasts"—it makes me feel fenced in and claustrophobic. Let us flow freely, yet safely through each other's lives.

The human world is calm and in order, but we can't find out what exactly that is or how it works unless we give up this barnyard society.

I am not an animal.

- Ewe/Girl on the Corner (I wrote this during my sanctioned lunch hour!)