Mandatory Joy: A Corporate Wellness Farce

About this book:

At Synthetix Logistics, sadness is now a KPI violation—and your face is company property. When Chief Morale Officer Tiffany Breeze installs AI-powered frown detectors on every monitor, senior spreadsheet wrangler Arthur Pym discovers that performing 31.4 degrees of labial elevation for eight hours straight requires either facial rigor mortis or creative sabotage. His weapon of choice: a yellow sticky note, a drugstore magnifier, and the cold comfort of gaming a system that mistakes a paper smile for the human soul.

From mandatory kombucha formations to desk-side screaming therapy, from weaponized icebreakers to the Great Melancholy Underground, *Mandatory Joy* escalates the absurdity with deadpan precision. Gary counts pension months like a prisoner counts days. Sarah props her cheeks open with a ballpoint pen. And somewhere in the ventilation ducts, a resistance ferments—armed with contraband onions, unsanctioned sighs, and the radical notion that despair might be the only honest metric left.

Sharp, surreal, and uncomfortably close to the quarterly review, this is *Office Space* meets *Black Mirror* for the age of wellness surveillance. You will laugh. You will wince. You will check your own resting face in the webcam light. And when the conga line mutiny finally arrives, you'll be rooting for the gloom.