Monday, all-hands. The slide says Embrace AI over a dark highway with neon streaks. He’s seen it before. Today the word journey is in bold.

Back at his desk, he asks the approved tool about a work thing. The answer is pretty good, but it’s not clear what he’s embracing.

* * *

Tuesday the boss sends three messages before six. All longer than they used to be.

He puts a supplier contract into a personal account, $20/month. He takes the names out first, which seems right. Solid analysis, he keeps it to himself.

At eleven everyone gets a two-page policy email. It doesn’t say anything about personal accounts. He asks the boss and she says use your judgment.

* * *

Wednesday he pilots a tool that sorts the support tickets. It routes most of them right and some of them wrong. He gets blamed for the wrong ones, so now he checks the tickets and the tool’s sorting too.

The real process has fourteen steps. The tool was built for the eleven on the poster. In the review the boss asks how it’s going. He says it’s going.

* * *

Thursday, the boss forwards a webinar invite with a yellow thumbs-up emoji. Ninety minutes on inbox organizing.

He has a question but doesn’t get called on. A guy two desks over doesn’t use any of it and is doing fine.

At home, in an hour, he builds a thing that runs the kids’ calendar. He doesn’t mention it at work, because he can’t think of what to say.

* * *

Friday. He knows of four people with a $20 account. No one talks about it.

At a roundtable the boss asks if people feel safe to raise concerns. People say yes, and aren’t lying. Later she says she doesn’t know the policy, or who’s using what, and that she really should.

At dinner he complains that the thing he built for his kids in an hour is more than the company has done all year. He looked at jobs on LinkedIn twice this week.