Every generation thinks it invented workplace misery. The Victorian clerk had ledgers. The 1950s secretary had carbon paper. The 1980s office had fluorescent lights and fax machines. Today’s worker has Slack pings, calendar invites, and five different platforms that all claim to improve productivity while actively preventing it. The tools change, the language changes, the furniture gets less comfortable in new ways. But the basic corporate frustrations? Those have been clocking in for centuries.
#1: The Meeting That Could Have Been a Memo
Before it was a meeting that could have been an email, it was a meeting that could have been a memo, a letter, a notice, or one firm sentence from someone with a functioning spine. Workers have always been summoned to sit through information that could have traveled alone. The real purpose is rarely communication. It is visibility, hierarchy, and the ancient managerial need to prove that gathering people in a room counts as leadership.
