Workplace Horror: Books to Read After Watching Severance
When I got a message from my cell provider last month asking if I wanted to activate a free year of Apple TV+, I could not sign up fast enough and it was largely because of the show Severance. I adore Adam Scott from his roles in Parks and Recreation and The Good Place, and after his interview with NPR’s Fresh Air, I was convinced this was a show I needed to see. Workplace comedies (like The Office) and dramas (like Grey’s Anatomy) already take up most of my television time, so why not add a little workplace horror to round things out?
If you’re not familiar, Severance follows Mark, an employee of Lumon Industries who voluntarily undergoes a “severance” medical procedure to separate his work and non-work memories. Throughout the first season, Mark’s “innie” (work self) and “outie” (outer self) both start to uncover a web of conspiracy about what’s really going on at Lumon.
I’ve been interested in labor theory and sociology for years, but especially since I began a career in human resources (which coincided with the onset of a global pandemic). With so many of us having worked from home for the first time or having otherwise experienced a blurring of work/home boundaries, I was fascinated by the premise. It promised me lots of nuanced thought and commentary on capitalism, exploitation, identity, consent, and corporate reliance, and it did not disappoint.
If you’re eagerly awaiting season 2 like me and are looking for some books to scratch that workplace horror itch in the meantime, I have a few recommendations for you.
The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and the microaggressions, she’s thrilled when Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They’ve only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events elevates Hazel to Office Darling, and Nella is left in the dust.
Then the notes begin to appear on Nella’s desk: LEAVE WAGNER. NOW.
It’s hard to believe Hazel is behind these hostile messages. But as Nella starts to spiral and obsess over the sinister forces at play, she soon realizes that there’s a lot more at stake than just her career. Having joined Wagner Books to honor the legacy of Burning Heart, a novel written and edited by two Black women, she had thought that this animosity was a relic of the past. Is Nella ready to take on the fight of a new generation?
Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking.
To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination.
In a windowless building in a remote part of town, the newly employed Josephine inputs an endless string of numbers into something known only as The Database. After a long period of joblessness, she’s not inclined to question her fortune, but as the days inch by and the files stack up, Josephine feels increasingly anxious in her surroundings—the office’s scarred pinkish walls take on a living quality, the drone of keyboards echoes eerily
down the long halls. When one evening her husband Joseph disappears and then returns, offering no explanation as to his whereabouts, her creeping unease shifts decidedly to dread.
As other strange events build to a crescendo, the haunting truth about Josephine’s work begins to take shape in her mind, even as something powerful is gathering its own form within her. She realizes that in order to save those she holds most dear, she must penetrate an institution whose tentacles seem to extend to every corner of the city and beyond.
When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency.
As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the
night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO.
Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world—even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public.
Do you have any workplace horror recommendations to make? Please share them in the comments below.
