Paid to Exist
Not Justify
Decadent young woman. After the dance Ramon Casas Original Title: Jove Decadent 1899
For tsunimee, one of my earliest supporters and one of the most gallant and generous people I know. You have been cheering me on from the beginning, and I hope you know how much I love cheering you on, too. I will always be glad to share your work, champion you, and celebrate whatever good comes your way. This one's for you.
She knew her work. She did it well.
Ten years and not a thing gone wrong.
Then someone new began to tell
her every day a different song.
A ticket here, a box to check,
a form explaining what and why—
a paper trail around her neck.
Paid to exist. Not justify.
She pulled her flexi out of red,
the sleep lost, all the hours gained.
She came in early, came ahead—
got told off anyway. Explained.
A project due September,
five days old and called behind.
They said help. She'd remember
that word means fall in line.
She knew her work. She did it well.
The work was never what went wrong.
What broke her was the need to tell
each action like a counting song.
It's not the job. It's the show:
the costume and the tone,
the goals she makes up as they go
toward a ceiling known.
The yearly rite: she fakes the drive,
the growth, the zeal, the goals she's sold.
Somewhere she'll go she won't arrive—
do as you're told. Do as you're told.
She pays to exist. That's the deal.
She shows up. Does the work. Does right.
That should be proof enough. It's real.
Ten years should outweigh overnight.
She needs the workday to release
the hours trapped behind the screen:
a dress, a dinner, quiet, peace,
an unwatched hour in between.
A friend who asks, "You free today?"
And having time to answer, "Yes."
And letting that be enough to say.
No form, no proof, no more, no less.
She isn't asking work to give
her purpose, passion, praise, or fame.
She wants enough of life to live
without accounting for each claim.
She'll give the hours they're paying through,
and let the tickets have their name;
then close the door on what they do
and keep the hours they cannot claim.
$8/month puts you in a room with people who read poems
at their desk and feel something crack.
Come in.
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or
Meg. I am in shock and going to need a moment to put some words together and respond properly to this. Wow. So overwhelmed right now 😭 Thank you. Thank you. THANK YOU
I read the movement from “paid to exist” to “she pays to exist” as the poem’s darkest turn.
At first, the employer appears to be paying for her capable presence. Gradually, we understand what she pays in return: sleep, flexibility, privacy, unobserved time, invented ambition, and repeated explanations for work she already knows how to do.
That inversion also clarifies why ten years of competence cannot protect her. The new system is not evaluating whether the work gets done. It is evaluating whether she performs productivity in the approved costume, tone, vocabulary, and paper trail. “A project due September, five days old and called behind” is especially sharp because it reveals an expectation designed to outpace accomplishment. She must remain perpetually deficient so that management can remain perpetually necessary.
The orderly rhyme resembles the “counting song” imposed upon her. Every line seems required to account for the next, just as every action must produce a ticket, box, form, goal, or explanation. “Do as you’re told” becomes the bureaucratic refrain beneath the annual ceremony of invented zeal.
Yet the ending does not give the workplace the whole poem. She will provide the hours she agreed to sell and let the tickets keep their administrative names. Then she will close the door and reclaim the hours they cannot legitimately possess.
Please keep writing into this territory, Meg. You have a gift for translating impersonal workplace systems into their intimate human cost. The screen, ticket, flexi balance, annual goals, dress, dinner, and an unanswered invitation from a friend show us exactly what bureaucracy consumes when it begins to treat a dependable human being as a problem requiring continuous documentation.