The copper wire was supposed to yield, but it didn’t, and as I yanked it, my jaw clamped shut with a sudden, jarring force. I bit my tongue. Hard. The copper-flavored tang of blood immediately filled my mouth, a sharp, metallic interruption to the hum of the neon transformer on my workbench. It’s a specific kind of pain-the kind that makes your eyes water and your temper flare because you did it to yourself, yet you want to blame the universe. I stood there, 44 seconds of pure, wordless irritation, holding a rag to my face and watching the neon gas flicker in the tube. It was a pale, sickly violet, struggling to find its rhythm. Just like the email that had pinged on my laptop 14 minutes earlier.

I’m a restorer. I spend my days fixing 1954 diner signs and rebuilding the internal guts of mid-century marvels. I understand what it means to take something broken and make it whole again. But you can’t restore trust with a hyperlink to a confidential hotline. Trust isn’t a resource you ‘provide.’ It’s a byproduct of how you treat people when the lights go out. And right now, the lights are flickering like a bad ballast in a roadside motel.

My tongue still hurts. Every time I try to swallow, that sharp reminder of the accidental bite comes back, and it makes me think about the 14 people I know personally who lost their jobs last Thursday. They don’t need a meditation app. They need their salaries. Or, at the very least, they need someone to admit that this situation is a total disaster instead of framing it as an ‘opportunity for recalibration.’

Bureaucratic compassion teaches people to mistrust institutions precisely when trust would matter most. When you wrap a layoff in the language of ‘wellness’ and ‘self-care,’ you aren’t being kind; you’re being gaslighted by a font choice.

I’ve been stripping the paint off a 1964 Chevrolet dealership sign lately. It’s got 4 layers of lead-based junk on it. You have to be careful with lead. If you rush it, you breathe in the poison. If you use the wrong chemicals, you ruin the metal underneath. Dealing with human emotions in a workplace is a lot like stripping lead paint. It’s toxic, it’s messy, and it requires a certain level of raw, unvarnished attention. You can’t just spray some ‘corporate-scented’ Febreze on a room full of grieving employees and expect the toxicity to vanish. The toxicity comes from the lack of clarity. People can handle bad news; what they can’t handle is the feeling that they are being managed through the bad news by someone who is reading from a teleprompter.

I’m a bit of a hypocrite, though. I criticize the ‘system,’ but here I am, still checking the emails, still trying to make sure my own tiny corner of the world stays profitable enough to avoid the next ‘optimization.’ I bite my tongue, literally and figuratively. We all do. We sit in these meetings and nod when the director of people operations talks about ‘leveraging our internal synergies for mental fortitude.’ It sounds like a car commercial for a car that doesn’t have an engine. We know it’s empty, they know it’s empty, but we all agree to pretend the tank is full because the alternative is to admit that we are all just parts in a machine that doesn’t particularly care if we squeak.

My tongue is starting to throb again. I should probably stop talking, or at least stop thinking so loudly. But there’s something about the way the light hits the floor in here that makes the corporate world feel like a fever dream. Out there, they talk about ‘maximizing touchpoints.’ In here, I just touch the metal. I feel the cold, hard reality of a thing that exists. There is no ambiguity in a 1954 neon sign. Either it lights up or it doesn’t. Either the circuit is closed or it’s open.

We’ve become too comfortable with the flickering. We’ve accepted the ‘resources’ because we’ve forgotten what it feels like to have a real advocate. We’ve traded clarity for comfort, and in doing so, we’ve created a culture where nobody is responsible for the pain, but everyone is expected to manage it. It’s a strange way to live, waiting for the next blue email to tell us how to process the next loss.

Sometimes, the only way to fix things is to step out of the circuit entirely. You have to go somewhere where the language isn’t designed to deflect responsibility. I’ve found that the most effective help doesn’t come from a PDF. It comes from spaces that prioritize the person over the process. Whether it’s a quiet workshop where you can focus on the tactile reality of metal and glass, or a place like

Discovery Point Retreat where the focus is on actual human recovery rather than institutional liability, the shift is the same. It’s moving from being a ‘resource user’ to being a human being with a name and a story that hasn’t been edited by a legal team.

I’ll probably go home and eat something soft, something that doesn’t require too much work for a bitten tongue. I’ll avoid the news. I’ll avoid the ‘community’ boards where people are still arguing about the 34 layoffs. I’ll just sit in the dark and watch the red glow from the window. There is a specific kind of peace in admitting that the institution doesn’t love you. You find the ones who aren’t afraid of the messy, unbranded reality of being a person in a world that would rather you be a ‘unit of productivity.’

Maybe the next time I get an email with a blue header, I’ll just delete it before I read the first 4 words. Maybe I’ll just go back to the neon. It’s easier to fix a broken light than it is to fix a broken heart that’s being told its grief is just a ‘temporary misalignment of expectations.’ We deserve better than polished empathy. We deserve the truth, even if it tastes like copper and makes our eyes water.