After graduation.

You’re 25, you just graduated from architecture school, and you’ve sent out 20 résumé’s and heard back from two. One of them is a high-pressure corporate firm downtown. The pay is barely as much as an intern, the hours are brutal and the position is listed as temporary. But it might be a foot in the door. You take the elevator, and you’re about to enter the interview room. The view for the 35th floor is incredible, but the man who interviews you stares at you, but all in the wrong ways.

Choice 1 : Welcome to the high-pressure corporate job.

Choice 2 : The road to a less corporate job.

Welcome to your high-pressure corporate job.

The first month is pure chaos. Separating your professional life and your personal life becomes a joke. You’re making copies upon copies of plans, you’re take coffee orders, and putting aside your mental health. You see people left and right getting promoted. People like mark, whose dads plays golf with the CEO. One night, as you’re working unpaid overtime, you overhear your manager mutter that you’re not fit for the job to other people which goes against the barely used office politics of this place. What should you do?

Choice 1 : Confront the manager.

Choice 2 : Stay silent.

The road to a less corporate life.

You decline the offer and freelance for a while. It’s unpredictable since you have no benefits, no security, less money, but at least it’s yours. Eventually, you find a nonprofit that values your ideas. The pay is low, but so is the competition. You design small houses, you work on some renovations ideas for kitchens and since you lead the workshop, you find your purpose. One day, the high-pressure corporate job calls again and they want you back, this time they’re giving you a promotion. Do you stay where you’re respected or do you go to climb the corporate ladder?

Choice 1 : Stay.

Choice 2 : The return.

Confront the manager.

You ask for a private meeting. You bring up what you overheard. The manager look down on you and tells you to not take it personally, that’s just what this job is about. A week later, you’re transferred to n other department. The workload has just double, your mentor stops replying to your emails and someone puts in a a vague and untraceable complaint on your behalf.

Choice 1 : The consequences of speaking out.

Stay silent.

You say nothing about the comments you overheard. Instead, you work harder, stay up late working unpaid overtime. You show up earlier then ever, but eventually, a promotion opens and they gave it to mark again. A few weeks later, you find out mark got fired , because he was the perpetrator of a work scandal which is sexual harassment. You didn’t know, but maybe you did you just didn’t want to believe it.

Choice 1 : Consequences of staying silent.

The consequences of speaking out.

You’ve left that dead-end job after two months, you’re now broke with no source of income, you never got the justice you deserve, but at-least you’ve kept your soul.

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Consequences of staying silent.

One night, after a dreadful day at work you sit down on your couch and turn the TV on. In the dark empty room you call “ living room” with just the Fluorescent screen you’re staring at, you’ve realized something: you were now part of a system you once wanted to change. Your silence kept you as another name in the company, but nothing else. You’ve learned how to conduct yourself, how to survive. But some night, the silence is louder than anything else, so you snap out of it and go to bed thinking “ that’s just what this job is about” and turn off the lights.

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Stay.

You decided to stay true to your values and you moral compass. with that, you live a good stress-free life.

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The return.

You decided to go back, this time the pay is triple, your the one giving orders now. But at nighttime, you stare at the sky from the window in your office, and you ask yourself “ all of this, but at what cost?” You have won the endgame but is worth the cost of your dreams and values?

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