Half the cubes in my section were occupied by the time I reached my seat. The cube walls were a compromise between the union’s demand for privacy and sound baffling and management’s need to hold us accountable for every second that we spent on the company clock. When unoccupied, the walls were solid white. As each cube’s occupants arrived, they would hit the button next to their nameplate and the walls would turn translucent, allowing us to be monitored without sacrificing the sound-muffling effects of the material. The walls could be set to solid again during breaks and lunches, when we were free to surf company-approved websites, deal with personal email, and otherwise goof off.

It’s not a perfect system. I’m not sure there is such a thing as a perfect system. Everything has its flaws, when it’s looked at from the correct angle. Why should someone who makes their productivity targets and doesn’t goof off be subjected to the same degree of monitoring as someone who never does what they’re supposed to be doing? Why could some people get away with dozens of violations before they got so much as a note in their files, while others got fired after their first actionable offense? It didn’t make sense, because nothing really makes sense if you dig deeply enough.

Take my coworkers. Some of them liked me, because I worked hard and was happy to answer questions. Others thought I was a stuck-up jerk, because I’d refused multiple promotions and preferred to spend my time at work working, rather than socializing. In the words of the old reality-show classics, I wasn’t there to make friends. Friends were a nice bonus, if they happened, but really, I was happier just knowing I had a job I could leave behind at the end of the day.

You’d think—or at least, I would think—they’d be grateful to have someone who kept her head down and the team’s numbers up. Instead, I was subjected to a continual low-level hazing, like being perpetually, casually cruel would one day cause me to go, “Oh, wait, I was wrong, I really do want to go out drinking with you at the end of my shift.” As I hit the button to clarify my cube walls, it became painfully clear that today was going to be no different.