Small workplace scenes no one notices, no one questions.
The training had been designed as a model, exemplary, rigorous, almost admirable in its precision, weeks of intensive learning, detailed protocols, calibrated simulations, values repeated until they became reflexes, and everything, absolutely everything, gave the impression that the organization had succeeded where so many others fail: aligning discourse, behavior, and the promised experience, without visible rough edges, without apparent contradiction, without ever letting surface what would later become central.
The trainer always entered at the same hour, upright, composed, voice calm, smile controlled, thirty years spent inside the organization, barely sixteen months before retirement, and that quiet, almost mechanical certainty that everything that mattered now lay behind her, measured, secured, guaranteed. She spoke of exemplarity, posture, responsibility, repeating that working here was not a job but a permanent performance, that one embodied the brand in the way one spoke, walked, answered, remained silent, disappeared when necessary.
She said:
“Here, you are being watched. All the time. You have to accept it.”
They were taught never to drink in public, never, never to give the impression of deviation, never to blur the narrative, to understand that observation did not end when the shift ended. Gambling was strictly forbidden, obviously, but it was immediately specified that what happened online, under a pseudonym, outside of traceability, concerned no one. Speaking about the organization on social media, never, neither positively nor negatively, hence the importance of anonymous accounts. Going out with clients, absolutely not — cameras were everywhere on campus — but off camera, outside the field of vision, no one could really know.
She said:
“It’s not what you do that matters. It’s what can be traced back to you.”
The rule was not not to transgress: the rule was not to be traceable.
And then, almost always at that point, the trainer spoke about the pension fund, at length, precisely, with figures, as a tangible, imminent, desirable horizon. She presented it as the best on the market, as a rare promise, almost as a moral reward. Facing these young people barely entering professional life, she repeated that every hour counted, that every shift brought them closer to definitive security, that the faster they reached permanency, the faster they would be protected for life, and in that room something shifted imperceptibly, the very idea of mission, engagement, collective pride giving way to a silent, methodical race toward a future so distant it became abstract, yet sufficiently brandished to justify everything else.
One day, as with every cohort, a young man raised his hand. He wanted to know why they were required to pretend to be irreproachable rather than be irreproachable.
For a few seconds, silence crossed the room, a light, almost polite silence, quickly closed by a smile, a vague reformulation, a reminder of the realities of the profession.
The next day, he did not return.
They said he was not a good “fit” because he did not understand the spirit of the organization. At heart, he was too rebellious to integrate the structure.
On the intermediate floors, middle management knew this scenario perfectly. In every cohort, there was always one. The one removed from the system was never the one who arrived late with a clever excuse, nor the one whose wrinkled uniform still carried traces of a night too long, as long as he could tell a story that made people smile. It was always the same profile: the one who asked unnecessary questions, the ones that threatened the fragile balance between the top and the ground.
Middle management had become middle management precisely for this reason.
Because it had learned to live in functional schizophrenia: downstairs, you let things happen; upstairs, you tell what needs to be heard. You absorb, you filter, you rewrite. In short, you were middle management because you had acquired the skill of protecting the narrative.
During meetings with leadership, stories went up clean, reassuring: a young, engaged, promising team, and above all proof that the system worked. Action had been taken quickly. The weak element had been removed. Firmness had been shown.
Executives read these reports with the particular relief of someone who recognizes a system that holds. Not because it is just, but because it is coherent. What mattered was not that people were honest. What mattered was that nothing came up that forced a choice.
Weeks passed. Training ended. Shifts began. The race for hours intensified. Everyone counted, calculated, anticipated, not to serve better, but to reach that precise point where one stops being replaceable, where one becomes permanent, protected, untouchable.
One morning, in the president’s office, sitting on the low couch, file placed on the table, he skimmed the latest adjustments to the training program. He stopped on one line, not long, just enough that one could not tell whether he was really reading or simply checking that the sentence was still there.
The mention of the rebel, the one who had been removed. It was there, again.
He smiled.
He closed the file, looked up at the trainer, then asked whether recruitment for the next cohort had started.
He was told yes, everything was already ready.
He nodded, stood up, and as he left the room, simply added:
“We must not waste time. These young people are sensitive material; it’s better to train them early, while they are still malleable, before they develop bad habits.”
No one asked which ones.
And no one ever asked whether he was pretending not to know — or whether that was precisely what he was paying for.
Seedz / Silent Guest
Not a coach. Not a therapist.
A clear mirror — to see clearly, before choosing.
