I am currently staring at a hex key and a pile of particle board that supposedly forms a bookshelf, though I am 26 percent sure that half the internal supports are missing from the box. It is a specific kind of frustration, the realization that the tool you were given does not match the job you were told to do. I have spent 46 minutes trying to force a plastic peg into a hole that is clearly bored at the wrong depth. It is a mess. But as I sit here on the floor, surrounded by Swedish engineering failures, I realize this is the exact same feeling I had when my best friend, a brilliant designer, was promoted to Creative Director. She was the best at what she did-an artisan of the pixel-and now she spends 106 minutes a day arguing about seating charts and vacation requests. We have broken her, just as surely as I am about to break this laminate shelf.

The Trophy of Inutility

“

It is as if we saw a world-class violinist and said, ‘You play so well, we have decided to make you the person who schedules the janitors for the concert hall.’

”

We are obsessed with the idea that the only way to go is up. In our corporate structures, ‘up’ is a ladder that eventually stops being a ladder and becomes a

Mark’s right hand is fused to the steering wheel of a rented SUV, a thin film of sweat making the leather grip feel like a living thing. Through the windshield, the Florida sun hits the asphalt with a physical weight, creating those shimmering heat-mirages that make the road look like it’s liquefying 44 yards ahead. Beside him, Sarah is scrolling through a PDF of floor plans, her thumb moving with the mechanical precision of a woman who has looked at 184 kitchens in the last 24 hours. They are from Chicago. In Chicago, they have a rhythm. They have the 4-minute walk to the corner bodega where the guy knows they like the heavy roast. They have the gray, industrial pulse of the city that demands you be someone-someone specific, someone with an edge.

Here, in the sprawling, sun-bleached silence of a Palm Beach County suburb, that edge is melting. It’s not just the humidity, which is currently sitting at a stifling 74 percent. It’s the silence. The house they just toured was perfect on paper: 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, and a breakfast nook bathed in light that makes everything look like a high-end commercial. But as they drive toward the next ‘must-see’ property, a cold, unnameable dread is settling in Mark’s chest. He realizes that if they buy