Guest column: How does the “rupture” reflect the collective struggle to achieve work-life balance?

When I first wrote Pilot Release, I worked for a door manufacturing company. It was a very useless job: cataloging all the different parts of the door. There’s nothing terribly unique or interesting about this job that I don’t like about my work, even people who do what they love can feel like they’re just being smart. But my work got so messed up that I had a fantasy that would become the basis of the show. What if I could skip eight hours a week to finish and just finish?

I joke that the big layoff, a phenomenon where 47 million Americans left their jobs in 2021 alone, was my idea, but there was actually a lot going on at the time we were doing it. Release. The pandemic has forced people to reevaluate the need for many things in their lives, especially to question all the conventions we associate with having a job. Some people can do their jobs just as well without having to go to the office to check their email multiple times a day. There’s no real practical reason to spend half a day awake at work when one can be so productive at home without making such a prudish sacrifice.

But the pandemic has, to some extent, tipped the scales more towards work. When you can work from home, you no longer have to enter the office separately. I think a lot of employers saw it and enjoyed it: “We have your cell phone, we have your email, we can reach you anytime, anywhere.” It becomes more difficult and necessary to maintain the balance between professional and personal life. We do our work apparently very close to where we sleep. This is something that happened slowly and the elements that led up to the big layoff and this new conversation about work, life and happiness really impacted. Release At each step. What we were building matched what was to come in the real world.

When Britt Lower’s Helly joins the microdata refinement team at the start of the show at Lumon Industries, her fellow Inns are deliberately working in the tropics. Here is John Turturro Irving, a tenacious company man who sincerely believes in what he does at work. Zack Cherry Dylan is brash but competitive and stubborn. Mark, played by Adam Scott, is a little jerk, kind of a middle-aged kid in the family who tries to keep everyone together. I once had a job where our group was sitting on a small table island that was at a show. as Mr. Milchick from Trammel Tilman, our boss would come in and pretend we were on a comedy show: he was fueling a funny joke that became part of the office culture and kept us working and making us happy.

I’m not saying there’s an intrigue behind this particular person or company, but I started to feel that there was a very narrow space in our personal lives at work. Our employer encouraged this little joke to make us feel satisfied and human, but it couldn’t grow into a problem. happens in the process ReleaseThe first season where these characters, who are scaled-down versions of themselves, start to discover who they really are and start acting authentically in a way that is problematic for the company.

We have deliberately placed several departments at Lumon separate from each other. There are weird ways to create distrust between them, which was a mutated version of the real experience I had while working in the office. The same ex-manager once took me to lunch to talk about my pay raise, which was a small amount, a $7 a day raise, and told me how someone in another department was complaining about his small raise. He advised me, “Don’t be the guy who asks everyone about salaries.” It showed me that he would be agitated to ask questions. People may mean well, but when they force you to feel like a family member to avoid asking for more money, it gets more personal.

I’ve also done a lot of research on cults that most people define as toxic organizations that benefit humans. But there is variety: the tactics used in cults are found in many religions and organized corporations. Inside ReleaseThere is a cult of personality surrounding Lumon founder Kier Igan, a messianic figure who “revolutionized” the company to change the world for the better.

We define ourselves by our work, and what’s put into the show is the idea that “outsiders” – who the characters are when they’re not in Lumon – feel a little lost. Mark, in particular, is uncontrollable; He has gone through a separation procedure to help him grieve the death of his wife, but he feels almost powerless, he doesn’t know where to start to get over this pain. He doesn’t have a complete understanding of who he is. We’re so conditioned to identify as someone who does a certain job throughout the day, but Mark can’t do that anymore. He is a kind of ghost who walks around in the real world without talking or saying much.

Finding a Purpose The contribution we make to our work and our community is made in us and is unlikely to come out. This quality is often used, and we often have to identify more fully with our work than we normally would. This affects us in the film and television industry, as well as the average office worker in corporate America: team members often work 12 hours a day, creating a dangerous work environment. Part of the culture is that there is an expectation that your love of film or television and your appreciation for the set will make certain working conditions an understandable part of the job. The industry is not exempt from the cult statements and tactics we are investigating. Release.

I guarantee that everyone who watches our show is most interested in their job descriptions, maybe even the ones they forgot. Whatever job you choose and decide you want, if you’re lucky enough to choose it, it can be a wonderful experience, but sometimes we lose sight of the fact that it’s more important to us than what we do. Easy to say, but hard to do. But it is important to remind ourselves from time to time that we are human beings first and workers second.

The story first appeared in a separate June issue of The Hollywood Reporter. Click here to subscribe to the magazine.