Most of our adult lives revolve around jobs and money.
But ask two people what a job is for, and you’ll get two different answers. Ask them what money is for, and again the answers will vary. The truth is, our views on these two things reveal more about us than we realize.
I spent more than two decades in corporate life, surrounded by questions and answers about jobs and money. Even now, many of my friends still live in that world, so our conversations often circle back to those topics.
It’s no surprise then that many of my stories are populated by characters shaped by jobs and money.
For some, their job and the money it brings are central to their identity. These are the driven corporate honchos whose status depends on their work. In Stuck on the Mezzanine and Symbiosis, protagonists like these find themselves thrown into situations where the tide turns against them, forcing them to face the fragility of what they took for granted.
Sometimes these tales turn satirical. Rahul and Damodar Das is about a CEO threatened by a robot who, the board believes, can do his job better. It’s a comic reflection on corporate absurdities — the kind anyone who’s worked in an office will recognize.
For others, jobs and money are simply a means to an end, not something to lose their freedom over. These misfits refuse to pay the price of complete conformity. Full and Final Settlement tells the story of one such character caught in the mind games of an insecure boss.
And then there are the optimisers — the ones trying to balance career ambitions with personal lives. The Perfect Couple is a lighthearted tale of an employee trying to impress his boss through his wife’s cooking, and the wife who’s less than impressed with the plan.
I never set out to write “corporate stories.” I began with characters, and they happened to emerge from the world I knew best — the world of jobs and money. Over time, those characters found their way into collections like Potpourri and Melange.
Maybe one day, I’ll write a set focused entirely on the corporate office — jobs, money, and the many dramas they generate. Because in the end, jobs and money aren’t just about livelihoods. They’re also about the stories they create.
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