memeifying my workplace to cope with the unbearable weight of being employed

they made the TV show Silicon Valley into a real thing

In honor of recently leaving my job at LinkedIn, here’s my collection of corporate “memes” I amassed in my four years of bureaucratic servitude.

This was inspired by my friend/former co-worker Serena’s work memes folder. On her last day of employment, she gathered us to screen share her favorites, before they’d get wiped out by corporate after her departure.

I instead emailed mine to my personal computer.

(IF ANYONE FROM CORPORATE IS READING THIS, THERE IS NO SENSITIVE INFORMATION OR COMPANY SECRETS SO GO AWAY.)

Friendly Feedback!

I don’t know if I want it a more “meaty and exciting” update to be honest. I would prefer to keep it at the current level of meat and excitement, if that is alright.

fair enough tbh.

We are literally a tech company.

jk, jk. unless…?

cannot loading dashboard :(

what makes this particularly funny is that our company’s owned by microsoft.

thanks.

The Beautiful Bureaucracy

“Associate” got cut off. Haha.

a DM received in the middle of a sizing meeting from a higher-up.

yay??

based.

no i made it up to goof off actually

I sent a calendar hold to my friend/co-worker for the snack tasting fair (where we get to try a bunch of snacks and vote which ones we want the company to stock) and apparently an hour for that was considered long. I just wanted to give very helpful feedback on the snacks.

i can’t believe these are real emails. wworms.

wfb (work from bath)

wfp (work from pilates)

What.

I feel like it’s best to not.

from the workplace training.

From a meeting where we were silently reading a doc at the beginning. I found this really endearing.

yeah, you got me!

From my friend/coworker, an insane coffee chat intro where the organizer AI generated an image of them (naked??) bathing together in coffee.

yes…

why did they wink react to me

Shitposting on Slack

thanks Dan.

thanks Dave.

referencing the time i sent people to chicago to see The Bean and then stay there forever

i’ve started a movement

Breaking through the worksona (work persona)

*Insert obligatory Severance reverence just to get it out of the way.*

this was my slack status for two years cuz it was cute and i kinda normalized it for myself but sometimes people would ask questions, unfortunately

well it’s my favorite color and i’ve never liked anything just a normal amount.

since I was on the LAN team, our OKRs (business goals) were “professional schemes”

Our manager’s name is Ling, so I suggested we call our team chat “Ling’s Underlings.” And everyone was like, haha that will be great until we can formalize a real name! And then they named it “blingcrew.” Are you kidding me. No one appreciates my genius here.

Mackenzie Catherine Sharp

The first time I met Mackenzie, we were at a new grads lunch, and she was explaining how she took meetings from her hot tub and wanted to get a mechanical bull for her apartment. I decided right then we would be friends. We went on to hang out basically every day, lived together for a year (we now live across the street), and even started our Substacks together, so I’d say my plan was a success. People are always surprised to hear that we met at work, such a banal phenomenon, due to the nature of our shenanigans.

actually very useful advice.

not according to our workplace training.

The Workplace Team

Thanks Jack.

is this really necessary

When corporate built a new workplace cafe, they let us vote on the name. One option was “The Link.” This clearly has connotations of “sneaky link” but apparently no one else thought that, because it won.

At the same time, we had an acquaintance/co-worker who was kinda notorious for being ran-through among the new grads friend group, let’s call him Sebastian. So Mackenzie and I would joke that they were giving Sebastian an office up at The (Sneaky) Link for all his “appointments.”

you cannot tell me they don’t know what they’re doing with this. come on.

Also, they let the baristas control the aux in the cafe, so we would sometimes hear: “I’ve been a nasty girl. Nasty. I’ve been a nasty girl. Nasty.” playing over our corporate lunch. Or, “Dirty babe, you see these shackles baby I’m your slave, uh huh. I’ll let you whip me if I misbehave, uh huh.” Etc.

I remember one particular day when I was feeling really down, and trying to have my sad dramatic moment gazing out the window, and Souja Boy was blasting over the speakers. And you really can’t be sad when “watch me crank that souja boy and supersoak that hoe” is blaring through your company’s sound system.

And the final meme:

And with that, I’m LinkedOut.