re: 9-5 Alter Ego - Orion
I recently encountered this post⤻ by Orion and felt that I had very similar experiences. I always just kind of assumed everyone did this, where they would adopt a clean persona (no obscenity, no politics, no... personality) when they were at work. Perhaps it's just my interpretation of the way that workplace behaviour has been changing over time, but it only seemed that people were becoming more and more fake at work. The phenomenon of off-colour-joke-turned-instant-termination seemed to be getting more and more common as time went on. As someone who likes their job (certainly more than I like to tell edgy jokes), I always have done my best to stay well centred within the Workplace Overton Window.
However, recently I've found myself using my "9-5 Alter Ego" even outside of business hours. Particularly of note for me was catching myself using it on a date. I was trying to be cool. Be likeable. But not in the wacky way I am with my close friends. Rather, I was behaving the way I do at work. Sterile. Professional. But I can see how that would be kinda cold and off-putting. There was one point I even found that I didn't recognize my own voice. It was such a strange occurrence, made even more awkward by my internal noticing of it. As I was talking to this person, the words were coming out, but I would almost have sworn that someone else was saying them. It felt as if I was writing a script and feeding it to a translator. Every thought that was meant to be spoken was run through so many filters for content and tone that it became a different language by the time it came out of my mouth.
Yours Truly,
[Redacted]