The Digital Lobotomy

Scanning the 103 unread notifications that accumulated while I was in the sub-basement checking the ventilation seals, I feel that familiar twitch in my left eyelid. I had just finished an 83-hour week, most of which was spent documenting why the third-floor fire suppressors were leaking 13 milliliters of fluid every hour, when the email arrived. It wasn’t a pay adjustment. It wasn’t a thank-you from the VP of Operations who had been breathing down my neck for 3 days. It was an automated ‘Kudos’ award from the ‘High-Five!’ recognition portal, informing me that I had been granted 503 points for ‘Demonstrating Core Values.’

I stared at the screen, my hand hovering over the mouse. In a fit of genuine, unadulterated frustration, I tried to navigate to my personal bookmarks to find some solace in the real world, but my finger slipped. I accidentally closed every single browser tab I had open. 43 tabs of safety regulations, compliance logs, and half-finished reports-poof. Gone. It was a digital lobotomy that felt strangely appropriate for the moment. The corporate machine had just patted me on the head with imaginary currency, and in response, my brain decided to erase its own history.

Eva J.D., safety compliance auditor. That’s the name on the badge. I’m the person who tells you that your staircase is 3 inches too narrow or that your emergency lighting is failing the 93-minute duration test. I deal in hard facts, measurable risks, and the cold reality of physics. Perhaps that’s why these recognition programs feel so profoundly insulting. They are the antithesis of reality. They are a performative layer of grease applied to the gears of a machine that is grinding its parts into dust.

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The point of a point is to point away from the paycheck.

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The Audit of Appreciation

Let’s look at the math, because as an auditor, I can’t help myself. I spent 83 hours ensuring this building wouldn’t spontaneously combust. My reward was 503 points. I logged into the ‘High-Five!’ catalog to see what my ‘loyalty’ and ‘excellence’ were worth. A branded plastic water bottle was 603 points. A generic power bank that would probably explode (and fail my own safety audit) was 1,203 points. I was 100 points short of a container to hold water. I had saved the company potentially millions in liability and fines, and I couldn’t even get a vessel for hydration. This isn’t appreciation; it’s a taunt. It’s a way for management to outsource the emotional labor of gratitude to an algorithm that costs them $13 per employee per year.

The Theater of Victory

The theater of it all is what’s most exhausting. Last month, our CEO sent out a company-wide blast. The subject line was ‘Celebrating Our Wins!’ It featured a photo of a guy from logistics who had won the ‘Employee of the Quarter’ title. He was holding a $25 gift card and smiling like someone who had a gun pointed at him just off-camera. The very next paragraph in that same email detailed how the company had reached a record-breaking $433 million in quarterly profit, an increase of 23 percent over the previous year. The juxtaposition was so violent it should have required a safety permit. We are making hundreds of millions of dollars, yet we are rewarding the ‘stars’ of the show with the equivalent of a steak fajita dinner for one, minus the tip.

I’ve caught myself participating in the theater, too. That’s the contradiction I live with. I complain about the ‘Kudos’ system, yet three weeks ago, I found myself ‘recognizing’ a junior auditor for her ‘can-do attitude’ because I didn’t have the budget to give her the actual raise she deserved. I used the system I despise to bridge the gap of my own impotence. I gave her 203 points. I watched her receive the email and saw her face fall. We both knew the points were worthless, but we both played our parts in the script. I am a safety auditor who is currently overseeing the structural collapse of morale.

These programs aren’t designed for us. They are designed for the middle managers who need a metric to show that ‘engagement’ is up. They need a chart with a line that goes from 3 to 63 to prove that the ‘culture’ is healthy. If you can measure gratitude, you can manage it. If you can manage it, you can minimize it. It turns the sacred act of saying ‘I see what you did, and it matters’ into a transactional tick-box. It devalues the human effort by suggesting it can be quantified by a ‘Star’ icon and a digital voucher. When appreciation is automated, it becomes noise. It’s the hum of the fluorescent lights in my office-omnipresent, slightly annoying, and completely devoid of warmth.

The Direct Value Lost

I remember an audit I did at a smaller firm about 13 years ago. There was no ‘High-Five!’ portal. There were no points. But when the team finished a particularly grueling project, the owner would walk down to the floor, look people in the eye, and hand them a physical envelope. Inside was a handwritten note and a bonus that actually covered a mortgage payment. There was no ‘theater’ because there was no need for a costume. The value was direct. Today, we’ve replaced that direct value with a layer of abstraction. We’ve gamified survival. We’ve turned the workplace into a low-stakes arcade where the prizes are all made of cheap plastic and disappointment.

This abstraction is dangerous. In my world, if I abstract a safety risk, people die. If I say ‘the fire risk is 43 percent lower’ instead of ‘fix the damn pipes,’ I am failing. But in the corporate HR world, abstraction is the goal. It buffers the leadership from the reality of their employees’ lives. It’s much easier to sleep at night knowing you gave out 13,000 ‘Kudos’ points than it is to acknowledge that your staff is using food banks while you’re shopping for a third vacation home. The points are a sedative for the conscience of the C-suite.

I’m sitting here now, staring at the blank screen where my 43 tabs used to be. I could try to recover them. I could go through the history and click each one. But there’s a part of me that wants to leave them closed. Maybe the loss of that data is the only honest thing that’s happened today. It’s a clean break from the ‘theater.’ I think about the users of digital platforms who actually see value in their rewards. People who engage with services where the points aren’t a patronizing substitute for pay, but a direct line to utility. When you look at the landscape of digital value, you realize that some ecosystems actually respect the user’s time. For instance, the way users can leverage Push Store to get direct, tangible benefits for their digital engagement stands in stark contrast to the hollow points my company dangles in front of me. In those spaces, the transaction is honest. In my office, the transaction is a trick.

The Platinum Sticker vs. Steel Reinforcement

I once found a mistake in a safety log-a big one. It was a 23-page discrepancy that hid a major structural flaw in a warehouse. I spent 3 nights re-calculating the load-bearing capacity of the racks. When I submitted the report, my boss didn’t even look at the data. He just said, ‘Great catch, Eva. I’ll make sure to give you a Platinum Badge on the portal.’ A Platinum Badge. I had prevented a potential collapse that could have crushed 13 workers, and he gave me a digital sticker. I didn’t want a trophy. I wanted him to fix the racks. I wanted the company to invest in the safety I was auditing. But the ‘Badge’ was cheaper than the steel reinforcement.

That is the core of the ‘Sad Theater.’ The recognition is used as a substitute for action. It’s a way to acknowledge a problem without having to solve it. ‘We see you’re working hard, here’s a badge!’ ‘We see the equipment is failing, here’s a points bonus!’ It’s a linguistic sleight of hand.

I’ve started ignoring the notifications. Every time the little bell icons pings, I feel a surge of resentment. I have 2,003 points sitting in my account now. I could get a toaster, or a set of screwdrivers, or a branded hoodie that would make me a walking billboard for the company that is underpaying me. I think I’ll let them expire. There’s a certain dignity in leaving the points on the table. It’s my way of saying that my labor isn’t for sale at these prices.

Exiting the Play

Maybe I’ll go home. It’s only 3:33 PM, but after the Great Tab Disaster of today, I think my compliance with the ‘office hours’ theater is at an end. I’ll walk past the ‘Employee of the Month’ plaque in the lobby, with its 3-year-old photo of a woman who quit 6 months after it was taken. I’ll drive home in a car that needs a $433 repair, and I’ll think about how many ‘Kudos’ it would take to fix a transmission. The answer is always the same: infinitely more than they are willing to give.

We don’t need more programs. We don’t need more ‘High-Fives.’ We need a return to the basic, unadorned truth of work: I provide a specialized skill that keeps your business from burning down, and you provide me with the resources to live a life that doesn’t feel like a constant audit of my own poverty. Everything else is just a costume. And I, for one, am tired of the play.