The transformer hums at a frequency that vibrates right through the soles of my boots, a low-voltage growl that reminds me I’m one slip away from 12007 volts of regret. I’m balanced on a 17-foot ladder, the kind that creaks in three different languages, reaching for a flickering electrode on a custom-built neon sign that’s supposed to say ‘INTEGRITY’ in a vibrant, pulsing blue. It’s funny, really. I’m up here because the ‘I’ keeps dying. It flickers for a second, tries to find its light, and then fades into a dull, grey shadow, leaving the rest of the word-NTEGRITY-to hang there like a misspelled joke in the lobby of a firm that manages 47 billion dollars in assets.

I spent the morning cleaning coffee grounds out of my keyboard before I headed to this job site. It’s a tedious, mindless task, poking at the gaps between the keys with a toothpick, but it gives you time to think. The grounds get everywhere, oily and stubborn, much like the reality of a workplace that refuses to acknowledge its own mess. You can try to blow the dust away with compressed air, but the grit remains under the surface, making every click feel slightly wrong, slightly dampened. That’s exactly how it feels to walk through these hallways. You see the posters, printed on high-gloss stock that probably cost $77 a pop, declaring that this company values ‘Radical Transparency’ and ‘Bold Innovation.’ But the air in here is heavy with the kind of silence that only exists when people are terrified of saying the wrong thing.

The Innovation Lab Paradox

I’m looking down from my ladder into the ‘Innovation Lab.’ It’s a room filled with beanbags that nobody sits on and whiteboards covered in 77 different colored sticky notes. In the center of it, a middle manager named Rick-who looks like he hasn’t slept since 2017-is currently leaning over a junior developer. The developer is staring at a screen while Rick gestures wildly at a clock on the wall. They’re supposed to be ‘Failing Fast,’ according to the vinyl decal on the glass door, but Rick is currently demanding to know why a beta test ran 7 minutes over its allotted window. The irony is so thick you could cut it with a glass cutter. The poster says ‘Take Risks,’ but the atmosphere says ‘If you trip, you’re done.’

This is the Great Corporate Lie. After 17 years of installing neon signs in corporate lobbies, I’ve realized that these posters are actually confessions. They are an admission of the company’s greatest deficiencies. The louder they scream the value, the more it’s missing from the actual marrow of the work.

The Glass Bending Test

I remember one job for a boutique investment firm. They wanted a sign that said ‘Authenticity’ in a custom script. I spent 47 hours bending that glass. While I was installing it, I heard the senior partner telling a junior associate to ‘massage the numbers’ on a quarterly report so it wouldn’t look like they’d lost 7 percent of their valuation. I almost dropped the transformer. I watched him walk past the word ‘Authenticity’ without even a hint of a flinch. It’s a talent, really, that level of compartmentalization.

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Metrics of Actual Respect

That’s the standard we should be holding these companies to. If you want to talk about ‘Respect,’ show me the turnover rate of your lowest-paid employees. If you want to talk about ‘Innovation,’ show me the projects that failed and the people who weren’t fired for them. But they won’t do that. It’s much safer to keep the posters. It’s safer to let me climb this 17-foot ladder every few months to fix the ‘I’ in ‘Integrity’ than it is to actually look at why the structure is vibrating itself apart.

I’ve got the new electrode in now. I’m stripping the wires back, 7 millimeters of copper showing. I look over at the ‘Transparency’ room. It has frosted glass. You can’t see a thing inside, just the blurry shapes of three people in suits. Probably discussing how to announce the next round of 77 layoffs while using the word ‘restructuring’ at least 47 times in the memo.

The Final Glow

I flip the switch on the transformer. The sign buzzes, the gas starts to glow-that haunting, beautiful blue. The ‘I’ is back. INTEGRITY. It looks perfect from the floor. It looks solid. But I know that the electrode is held together with a prayer and that the wiring is a mess. I pack my tools into my bag, making sure I don’t leave any debris behind. I’ve had enough of coffee grounds for one day.

I think I’ll go home and clean my keyboard again. It’s the only way to make sure that when I press a key, it actually does what it’s supposed to do, without the grit of someone else’s broken promises getting in the way.