Global Times, March 21, 2039
As burnout rates reach unprecedented highs, with 76% of professionals reporting chronic exhaustion and workplace attrition threatening global productivity, individuals are taking matters into their own hands. Sometimes with the help of biotech startups, sometimes with just a dash of performance training, and other times with solutions that would have been unthinkable just a decade ago.
Our Business & Technology investigative team interviewed three professionals who have adopted increasingly popular strategies to cope with the crushing demands of modern employment. About fifteen years ago, we thought that AI would replace our jobs, leaving us unemployed, yet possibly cared for by our robot overlords or supported through UBI. Instead, these stories reveal not just individual ingenuity, but perhaps something deeper about what we’ve lost, and what we’re willing to sacrifice to survive, particularly for the higher income worker or executive.
The “Proxy Worker” Subscription Service
“Honestly, she does a better job than I do anyway. And she never has panic attacks in the supply closet or cries in the bathroom during breaks.” —Mika, UX Designer, 34
Mika’s apartment overlooks downtown Seattle, but she rarely enjoys the view anymore. Between her demanding role at a Fortune 500 tech company and her side consulting work, she barely has time to water the plants that are slowly dying on her windowsill.
That’s where WorkBuddy comes in. The gig-based platform provides trained, hyper-adaptable “fill-in workers” for remote and in-office jobs. These part-time proxies don’t just learn your speech patterns; they can study your email signature, memorize your coffee preferences, and can even mimic your particular brand of passive-aggressive Slack communication. The quick adaptation to new jobs is due to the help of WorkBuddy’s “Doppleworker,” an AI that acts as a training guide for WorkBuddy proxies to better fit in with each unique workplace.
“My proxy is named Sarah,” Mika explains, stirring honey into her chamomile tea. “She’s actually a former theater major who lost her job when the entertainment industry contracted. She’s got this incredible memory for detail. She knows I always say ‘circling back’ instead of ‘following up,’ and she remembers which coworkers I avoid eye contact with.”
Whenever Mika feels a migraine building—or simply can’t stomach another “synergy session”—she taps a button on her app. Within twenty minutes, Sarah shows up, logs in, and performs the job just well enough to avoid suspicion. The service costs $170 per day, but Mika considers it cheap therapy when used on rare occasions.
“It’s not slacking,” she insists, though her voice wavers slightly. “It’s smart resource allocation. My boss doesn’t notice. My therapist says I’m happier. My mom thinks I’m finally ‘getting my life together.'”
She pauses, looking down through her window. “Sometimes I wonder if Sarah knows my job better than I do. She definitely handles the difficult clients more gracefully. Maybe that should worry me more than it does.”
The high cost of WorkBuddy for most office workers over the long term, as well as the fear of being fired, has lead other workers to find cheaper and more creative alternatives to their workplace struggles.
Method Acting for the Office
“I’m not burnt out—I’m playing the role of someone who isn’t. The trick is believing your own performance.” —Jay, Hospital Administrator, 41
Jay’s transformation began on a Tuesday morning when he found himself sobbing in his Honda Civic before a budget meeting. That’s when he discovered The Stanislavsky Institute for Professional Disguise, a hybrid acting school and executive coaching program housed in a converted warehouse in Portland.
Their flagship course, “Performative Positivity: Embodying the High-Energy Colleague,” trains students to adopt microexpressions, body language, and even tone modulation techniques to appear cheerful, alert, and engaged—even while spiritually vacant.
“The first week, they had us practice ‘enthusiastic nodding’ for four hours straight,” Jay recalls, unconsciously demonstrating the technique. “Then we moved on to ‘concerned but optimistic frowning’ and ‘collaborative shoulder positioning.’ It sounds ridiculous, but it works.”
The program costs him $8,000 and two weeks of vacation time, but Jay considers it the best investment of his career. He’s learned to channel different archetypes depending on the situation: the “Concerned Colleague” for staff meetings, the “Visionary Leader” for board presentations, the “Empathetic Supervisor” for one-on-ones.
“I cried on my lunch break for two years,” Jay confesses, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I mean, really cried. The kind where you can’t breathe and your face gets all blotchy. Now I just channel a character who genuinely loves spreadsheets and quarterly reviews. It’s practically therapeutic.”
But late at night, when the performance ends, Jay sometimes stares at himself in the bathroom mirror and wonders who’s looking back. “My wife says I’m different at home now too. More… distant. Like I’m always slightly in character. I tell her it’s just confidence, but honestly? I’m not sure I know the difference anymore.”
The “AutoSocial” Upgrade
“Meetings feel like naps now. Beautiful, lucid naps where I’m always somewhere else.” —”Leila,” Customer Success Lead, 29
Leila’s story begins with a breakdown during a three-hour client call about software integration protocols. She remembers the exact moment: 2:47 PM on a Thursday, when the phrase “Let’s take this offline and circle back with stakeholders” made her feel like she was dissolving from the inside out.
That’s when she discovered NeuroSilence, a black-market neurolink firmware patch that automates social interactions. The device, no larger than a hearing aid, listens to meetings, parses intent, and responds in her voice using pre-approved scripts and tonal patterns. Many users opt for the extra cost of the VR eye contact lenses to view content while NeuroSilence responds for you, even if you drift away to sleep.
“The installation took about fifteen minutes in a clinic in Tijuana,” Leila explains, unconsciously touching the barely visible scar behind her left ear. “They ask you to record about sixteen hours of work conversations first, so the AI can learn your patterns. Then they upload your digital personality.
Meanwhile, Leila dreams. “Sometimes I’m in Iceland, walking across those black sand beaches. Sometimes I’m reliving my college graduation, feeling that pure possibility. Sometimes I’m just floating in warm water, completely weightless.”
The technology allows her to maintain her $195,000 salary while psychologically checking out of the corporate machinery that was slowly killing her spirit. Her performance reviews have actually improved—the AI version of herself is more consistently pleasant and never gets distracted by existential dread.
“People say it’s not really me in those meetings anymore, but honestly? The person who used to sit through those calls wasn’t really me either. She was just… getting through the day. At least now I get to be somewhere beautiful while my body does the talking.”
Although technically illegal in most jurisdictions due to informed consent laws, NeuroSilence and other “AutoSocial” patches are increasingly popular among white-collar professionals suffering from what psychologists are calling “Conversational Overload Syndrome.” The underground market is estimated at $6.8 billion annually.
But Leila admits there are complications. “Sometimes I forget which conversations were real and which ones my AI handled. Last week, I apologized to a coworker for missing a deadline I apparently never agreed to. And my boyfriend says I sometimes respond to him like I’m in a meeting.”
Is It Adaptation or Collapse?
Dr. Elena Vasquez, a workplace psychologist at Stanford, calls these strategies “symptoms of a profoundly sick system.” She argues that when humans start outsourcing their consciousness to survive their jobs, we’ve crossed a line from adaptation into what she terms “voluntary dissociation.”
“We’re seeing people essentially fragmenting their identities to meet impossible demands,” Dr. Vasquez explains. “The question isn’t whether these solutions work—they clearly do, in the short term. The question is: what happens to the human being underneath?”
But the three professionals we interviewed push back against this framing. They see themselves not as victims, but as pioneers navigating an impossible landscape with creativity and pragmatism.
“Critics call it dystopian,” says Mika, “but they’re usually the same people who think we should just ‘set boundaries’ and ‘prioritize self-care’ while rent costs 60% of our income and healthcare is tied to employment.”
Jay agrees: “Everyone acts like there’s some pure, authentic way to survive modern work culture. But maybe authenticity is a luxury we can’t afford anymore. Maybe these are just tools for neurodivergent and overstimulated minds trying to make it through another day.”
The broader implications are staggering. If work has become so dehumanizing that people are willing to literally outsource their consciousness, what does that say about the fundamental structure of our economy? Are we witnessing the birth of a new kind of human adaptation, or are we watching the slow-motion collapse of what it means to be fully present in our own lives?
Perhaps the most troubling question isn’t whether these strategies work, but whether they represent a permanent shift in human consciousness. If we can survive by being partially absent from our own existence, what happens to creativity, to authentic connection, to the messy, inefficient beauty of being fully human?
As Leila puts it: “I’m not sure we’re meant to be this connected, this available, this perpetually productive. Maybe dissociation isn’t the problem…maybe it’s the solution to a problem we’re not supposed to solve.”
And in 2039, surviving the workweek may require a little delegation, a little performance, and a little… disappearance. The question that haunts us all is: when we finally finish performing, will there be anyone left to come home to ourselves?
The Work-Life Rebalancer is a monthly column examining the intersection of technology, psychology, and economic survival in the modern workplace. Contact the author at rebalancer@globaltimes.com with your own workplace adaptation strategies.
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C.J. Kelly (they/them) is a cross-genre storyteller whose work ranges from capitalist realism to unruly socialist utopian speculation. They write about work, desire, and systems that won’t leave us alone. This marks their debut in satirical sci-fi; fueled by burnout, tech-bro hubris, and Severance, “Three Radical Strategies to Avoid Burnout,” explores the depressing humor in our attempts to escape the pressures of labor.