The last time I had any kind of respect for my place of work was when I was on the cusp of adulthood. It was my first job, months after graduating from college, and I had been raised to think of an office as a place of seriousness that would give my life a sense of purpose. I was young and naive, so I bought into that elaborate con the way millions of us do and billions of us will continue to. As the years progressed, of course, my eyes and ears opened, leading me down that well-worn path of cynicism so many of us now trod through as middle-aged workers.

A decade in corporate India is five years more than it takes anyone to figure out that we give way too much importance to our offices. We accept their inane rules and regulations as sacrosanct, welcome the imposition of arbitrary punishments as our due, fall in line when Human Resource lackeys tell us to dress a certain way for festivals, and give away our hard-earned money in the form of dubious variable components that should be a legitimate part of our salaries. The biggest thing we give away, unfortunately, is our most precious asset: time.