The landlord installed "AI Attention & Sentiment Cameras" in our ceiling panels last week, claiming they were necessary for "Corporate Wellness Compliance." The cameras were programmed to analyze employee facial expressions and feed real-time metrics into a central "Happiness Index."
Unfortunately, the AI had been trained on polished Silicon Valley stock photos and had no context for the face of an IT professional staring at a corrupted network driver.
By Tuesday morning, my standard expression—a neutral, slightly deadpan stare—was flagged by the system as "Level 4 Workplace Agitation."
The ceiling camera directly above my desk clicked, pulsed a bright pink light, and the building’s automated HVAC system began softly blowing lavender-scented air onto my head while playing ambient elevator jazz from the ceiling speaker.
"What is that noise?" Gary from Sales shouted over the jazz.
"The building thinks I’m unhappy," I called back, squinting through the lavender haze. "It’s trying to soothe me."
By Wednesday, the entire floor was falling apart under the "Happiness Protocol." Brenda’s intense concentration face while balancing the monthly ledgers was interpreted as "Active Hostility," triggering the system to dim her local lights to "Calm Blue." She ended up doing accounting in near-total darkness, looking like a villain in a submarine movie.
The crisis peaked when a Regional Vice President arrived for an unannounced floor audit. Desperate to keep our department’s "Sentiment Score" above the regional threshold, The Director panicked.
Ten minutes before the VP walked in, The Director rushed around the office handing out printed paper masks of wildly smiling emoji faces attached to ice-cream sticks.
"Hold them up to your eyes!" he ordered, waving his hands frantically. "When the camera scans the room, hold the smiles up!"
The VP walked through the double doors, expecting a bustling corporate floor. Instead, he was met with forty adults sitting in total silence, holding cartoonish, hyper-smiling paper faces over their eyes while ambient jazz blasted and lavender mist rained down from the ceiling.
The AI camera overhead whirred, processed the sight of forty identical, motionless paper smiles, and immediately triggered a hard lockdown, broadcasting a digitized voice over the Tannoy: "Hostage Anomaly Detected. Deploying Calming Protocols."
The emergency shutters slammed down, trapping the VP in the dark blue light with us.
The Director slowly lowered his paper mask, looked at the frozen VP in the dim blue glow, and offered a weak smile. "As you can see... employee morale is at an all-time high."
Comments