The automatic doors into the building don’t exist- the bathroom, my desk, systematically materialise and dematerialise as I come and go. Once targets are met and sales coaching is met with enthusiasm and a workable knowledge of the company lexicon, hangovers become acceptable in the workplace. The key here is resilience.

Modern office decorum upholds a surreal sheerness, easily related to gambling addicts’ concentration. Beneath fluorescent lights and breathing in recycled air, a filed-down sensory awareness of soft carpet underneath your shoes becomes an invisible limb. A recurring ‘Blaire Witch Project’ moment of ‘having been here before’ and ‘are we going in circles?’ resounds between headaches, lines for the microwave and phone conversations. The mind's eye takes over as your cubicle blends into the office wall into an eggshell-white and grey tapestry until a call drops in. Somebody answers; you re-hash the intro, snapping out of your daydream, focusing on the screen to fit their name into the script. 

Casualties of 'auto-pilot' highway hypnosis include a week or six months passing in a blink, and the hangovers have become more frequent.

The blurred lines of ethics begin when you tell a forty-year-old man with a learning disability to follow his dreams when I enrol him in a $20,000 diploma in graphic design. "Don't listen to what others have to say, you can do it if you want. What's really stopping you? What do you dream of being? If you won the lottery, what would you do with yourself after you got the mansion and nice car?"

I ring the bell and the sales floor applauds me while I get high-fives as I walk back to my desk.