The Productivity Monster

I'm squinting at my quarterly performance review, trying to decode "demonstrates potential for enhanced productivity optimization" into human speak, when movement catches my eye. It's Rachel from Marketing, typing like her keyboard owes her money.

Rachel. Our office overachiever. The one who somehow does the work of three people while making the rest of us look like we're still running Windows 95. Actually, make that Windows 98 - at least 95 had that sweet pinball game. She hasn't taken a sick day since the Obama administration, and her vacation days probably have their own 401(k) by now.

Russell rolls by with his perpetually full coffee mug (seriously, does he have a secret pot somewhere?), catching me mid-existential spiral.

"Let me guess," he says, "contemplating Rachel's superhuman output again?"

"Is it wrong that I kind of hate her for making us all look bad?" The words tumble out before I can stop them. "I mean, she's literally making the company better by being so... Rachel. But..." I trail off, already feeling like a terrible person.

"Ah," Russell nods, "sounds like you've stumbled into the utility monster problem."

"That sounds like something that eats productivity apps and poops out Excel sheets."

He chuckles. "Not quite. Imagine there's this being that gets way more satisfaction from resources than everyone else. Like, exponentially more. Following pure utility logic, we should give them everything, right? Maximum happiness achieved."

I glance at Rachel's desk, where she's probably solving world hunger while responding to emails. "So Rachel's our utility monster, and the rest of us are what - productivity plankton?"

"Well," Russell says, taking an unnecessarily thoughtful sip of coffee, "if she can do the work of three people, and it genuinely makes her happy, shouldn't she get more resources? More projects? More opportunities?"

"But what about us mere mortals who need things like lunch breaks and, you know, oxygen?" I'm only half-joking.

"And there's the problem," Russell says. "When we reduce everything to pure utility, we risk losing something fundamentally human in the equation."

I sit with that for a minute, watching Rachel's fingers fly across her keyboard like she's playing some corporate concert piano. "Maybe..." I pause, reorganizing my thoughts, "maybe the real monster isn't Rachel at all."

Russell raises an eyebrow.

"It's this whole system that somehow convinced us our worth comes down to tasks completed and efficiency metrics." I turn back to my performance review. "Like measuring human value in spreadsheet cells is just... normal."

"Now you're thinking," Russell grins, rolling away with his mysteriously eternal coffee.

I start typing my response: "While I appreciate the focus on productivity, perhaps we should consider what we lose when we optimize everything, including ourselves, to death."

I add a smiley face. Then delete it. Then add it again. Because sometimes the most rebellious act is simply being human in a world that wants you to be a machine.

Take that, utility monster. I'm going to lunch.