Collecting Unemployment, Literally
Work/Life Balance Finally Achieved (100% Life)
The Janky Time Machine dropped me somewhere in the near-ish future at a strip mall that looks exactly like every strip mall, except the Spirit Halloween is now a permanent Spirit Unemployment.
Found this in the clearance bin at a place called “Remember When?” sandwiched between a VHS rewinder and something called a “2024 Election Participation Trophy.” The cashier had to blow dust off the price tag.
Someone’s manufacturing nostalgia for having a job. Not for a specific job, mind you. Just... the general concept of employment. The idea that you could show up somewhere, do a thing, and someone would pay you for it. That’s the throwback in this timeline.
The thermos lists the automation dates like they’re death certificates. Paralegal, Copywriter, Data Analyst—each one gets its little epitaph. It’s weirdly specific in a way that makes it worse. Some committee at Heritage Employment Memorabilia Co. sat around a conference table (probably for the last time, now that I think about it) and carefully researched when each job stopped being a job. Then they made it cute.
The guy at the register told me they’ve got warehouses full of these. Whole product lines ready to drop: “Classic Workforce Collection: Remember When? Series Vol. 4, 5, 6.” Turns out nobody’s buying. He said it wrong—he said “Nobody’s got the nostalgia budget anymore”—but I think he meant nobody wants to be reminded.
The Janky Time Machine is currently in the shop getting its temporal irony detector recalibrated. Follow Design Fiction Daily for more dispatches from futures that seemed impossible until they weren’t.
I love how you implicitly work the utopia/dystopia dichotomy, through the literal attempt to sell "look how far we've come" and it's apparent commercial failure.