Worker Says Mondo Mayo Made Him Watch a Partner Become a Rival — Then Fired Him For Joking About It

A piece titled “We Must Return to the Office to Use AI in Person” has drawn wide attention online for its account of a worker at a company called Mondo Mayo, once a maker of mayo, now a large company selling goods, software, and machines that watch people, and said to be one of three companies left on Earth.

The Setup

The piece is written as an account from an “Associate Slop Doula” whose job is to press the button marked Generate and then the button marked Approve thousands of times a day on a thing called SlurryHose. The narrator describes signing a paper called the Memorandum of Loving RTO as a condition of keeping the job, and says management claimed the office had always required six days a week and long hours each day, though the narrator remembered it another way.

Core Principles

The company runs on what it calls Core Principles, given in the piece as:

1. Good things are better than bad things.
2. “Yes, Boss. Great idea, Boss.”
3. More leaders mean more people leading.

The narrator says the company has fifteen ordinary workers and thousands of Senior VPs, run through a system called the Executron Management System.

Life at Mondo Mayo HQ

The office sits inside a building project at Mondo Mayo HQ that has gone on for twenty years, the piece says, following the company’s purchase of a business called Shit Hell Dot AI. The narrator describes loud machines, trucks marked Loose Asbestos, and mayo running out in the halls as common parts of the job, which management treats as chances to make focus stronger. Workers are also watched by an AI-powered system called Best Buddy, described as software meant to help them do their best.

At home, the piece adds, a rented machine called the Mondo Machine feeds the children of employees so that family life can be handled from a distance.

The Rivals

Mondo Mayo is one of three companies left on Earth, along with SodaPorn and Cagefight Pharma, according to the piece. The ties between the three change often. At one point the narrator is told SodaPorn is the rival and Cagefight Pharma is a partner; a day later, at a meeting for the whole company, the two are switched.

The narrator and a fellow worker named Blair joke about the change on the company’s chat system, Chatform, not knowing that the partnership had, in fact, never changed. Both are called into HR within minutes.

The Affair

The piece traces the start of something between the narrator and Blair back to a company event called The Getaway, held twice a year and ending with a contest of eating mayo, where their eyes met across the room. The affair itself did not begin until later, back at the office, when the two meet again while working side by side, slip off to an empty Mother’s Room, and start what the narrator calls a strong affair, staying together even when a contractor hits a line above them and spoiled mayo falls on them both.

That romance soon runs into the company’s rules.

Consequences

Both workers are placed on Help-You-Be-Your-Best Plans, the company’s name for a plan meant to fix poor performance. Under the rule, one of them will be let go and barred by a signed agreement from working for pay anywhere else again.

An SVP of HR patiently and kindly corrects the narrator for a poor attitude toward the Core Principles. A group the piece calls Fun and Love Rehabilitation SVPs then feed the narrator mayo directly through a device called the Mayo Cannon. An SVP of Finance, Philosophy, and Screaming explains that the company’s true goal was never profit, but power, reached once the whole world follows Mondo Mayo’s Core Principles.

The narrator, warned that losing the job would mean losing health care needed for back pain, asks that Blair be let go instead. The narrator is kept on and given a bottle of Motrin.

Closing

The piece does not say what becomes of Blair, and offers no comment on the Motrin, closing the account much as it began: with the narrator still at Mondo Mayo.

Source: mcsweeneys.net

AI satire · corporate culture · return to office · tech dystopia · workplace humor