camaraderie

there's a tenuous sort of camaraderie in this place, one in which i participate largely as an observer. i do play the charade of the underlings, contriving to convince the bosslady that everything is hunky dory, lying painfully through teeth in varying states of crookedness. though i find my enthusiasm for the game waning, and my desire to simply sit down with she-who-must-be-obeyed and tell her exactly how i feel about this whole situation growing. there is the bond between sally sue and the russian, born of the decreptitude of her computer and her strange flirtation with the young programmer. there is the chumminess born of the spreading obession with weight loss; there are gym buddies who compare the number of 'points' in each individual item of food and how bad they've been by putting whole milk in their coffee; never do they address the issue of why they're bothering to do this. it's a strange set of relationships that die the second we leave the building, because once we are out of big brother's line of sight, there's just no point to it. we would not be friends if we met on the outside. why try to convince ourselves otherwise?

and that kind of makes it worse than if there were no pretense of pleasantry at all.