If you've never worked in a big corporate office you are missing out on half of Severance
Everyone seems to be talking about the setting of this show like it's a big mystery we're waiting on answers for, and I keep having to remind myself that this is the Unemployed Website because every single aspect of the severed floor is a direct parody of corporate office work. Some of it is pretty obvious to anyone (being a totally different person at work than you are at home, excessive surveillance, etc), but unless you've worked in one of these places there's a ton you're probably missing.
So, for those of you who (luckily) lack corporate office experience, here is a non-exhaustive list of real phenomenon Severence is referencing:
- Having absolutely no clue where anything is other than your department. A large corporate office truly feels like working in a brightly-lit, featureless labyrinth. You get lost so easily, and the number of turns and hallways in the opening scene is not that much more extreme than how I had to get to my department (which was over a 5-minute walk from the main entrance). It's common to draw new employees a map.
- Cult-like worship and constant quoting of the company's founder/founding family and core operating principles. Long-time employees will genuinely treat it like religious doctrine. It's scary.
- The relationship between departments. The different cultures, outrageous rumors, distrust, compete lack of understanding of who they are, how many of them there are, where they work, what they do, and generally treating them like a foreign country is barely even a parody. It's just really like that. Going to another department and seeing their equipment and work area (and being stared at by a bunch of people who don't expect a stranger to be there) might as well be walking into a room that's a hill with intimidating goat farmers.
- Other people's jobs being utterly incomprehensible. The department that had a room behind a wall next to mine apparently used it for filling backpacks with weights until the straps broke. Another department had someone whose job was to shine different lights onto pieces of fabric and record the color difference. One of my positions was measuring various pants 20 different ways and then taking notes while a specific person tried them on. Apparently a guy somewhere occasionally got paid to make watercolors of birds. Some people did finance. You get the idea.
- Only ever hearing from upper management (who are treated like a group of fickle, wrathful gods) through a nervous secretary and never hearing their voices/seeing their faces. You might know their names.
- Weird, uncomfortable, often ritualesque events that are treated like a big deal. The company I worked for, for example, would announce the employees of the year by having a committee of people with noisemakers and silly hats parade around the buildings until they got to the person's desk, and then take their photo to hang on the wall. People were not warned beforehand, it was a ~surprise~. This happened daily at random times for over a week each year, and long-standing employees got really into it.
- People genuinely fighting over all those meaningless, patronizing rewards like pizza parties, fancy pens, etc. Having an "employee of the month" mug, for example, is treated as an enviable status symbol. Presumably this is why corporations think this stuff will also work in the service industry (it doesn't because service workers are normal).
- Ridiculous conspiracy theories about the building, management, coworkers, or company history, peddled like gossip.
- New employees having a rough adjustment period where it feels like you're adapting to an alternate universe. Office culture is nothing like real life though it's closer if you live in white suburbia and have an HOA, so during most people's first time working in one they bump up against a lot of unspoken rules, weird taboos, and general culture shock. Most of this involves navigating strictly-enforced social hierarchies, verbal adherence to company ideals, and using only specific types of communication, and being chastised when you mess up. It 100% feels like being indoctrinated into a cult.
- Not understanding the purpose of the work you're doing, and only receiving vague answers, that it's "important", and that there's a big exciting deadline. No single department has access to the big picture for how everyone's jobs fit together to accomplish something, you'd have to work in all of them or in upper management to figure it out. The inner machinations and goals of the company are generally treated like a mysterious secret.
- Never seeing the sky. Window offices are a prized commodity since the buildings are so big, so unless you're a high-up manager or the company has gone to great lengths to add access to widows (most don't because it's really expensive) you likely won't see daylight until you leave, even if you travel around the building during the day.
And for the Lifetime Unemployment crowd, some more general job phenomenon:
- So. Many. Acronyms. And being expected to say them all with a straight face, even if they sound really silly.
- Coworkers effectively ceasing to exist the moment they leave the company, with zero explanation given for why they're suddenly gone unless there's a retirement party.
- Management giving ridiculously nit-picky feedback as a form of hazing/power play, especially to marginalized people.
- Upper management making sudden, drastic changes to your job expectations, physical workplace, or management structure with zero notice and penalizing you if you can't adapt immediately.
- The entire vibe of your job being dictated by who your manager is.
- Your coworkers acting like what happens at work is their entire life, and treating their home lives as something extra they do on the side.
- Having no clue who your coworkers are outside of work, and that information being largely treated as taboo.
- Being effectively locked in a sealed space with zero access to the outside world for the entirety of your workday, and being told that that's not weird or a problem– it's a benefit that helps you focus on your job.
Basically: There's no big mystery to the structure and culture of Lumon/the severed floor. Most of it is never going to get a canon "explanation" because the target audience already has one. It's all a parody.
