My name is not relevant. My job title is Interdepartmental Coordination Specialist. My actual job is attending meetings. Not organizing them. Not presenting in them. Not taking minutes or distributing action items or following up on deliverables. Attending. I sit in meetings. That is the entire job.

I was hired three years ago by the Strategic Alignment division of a Tier 3 corponation that exists as a subsidiary of a subsidiary of Arcturus Industrial Solutions. My interview was conducted by a man named Douglas Hale who asked me standard behavioral questions — "Tell me about a time you demonstrated teamwork," "Describe a challenge you overcame" — and seemed satisfied with my answers, which were generic and inoffensive and apparently exactly what the role required. He described the position as "ensuring cross-functional presence in key alignment sessions." I nodded. He offered me Φ94,000 annually plus Tier 2 benefits. I accepted because Φ94,000 annually plus Tier 2 benefits is a life, and I am willing to sit in meetings for a life.

My calendar is full. I attend between six and nine meetings per day, each lasting between thirty minutes and two hours. The meetings are real — there are other people in them, and they discuss real things: project timelines, budget allocations, vendor evaluations, strategy reviews. I am introduced at the beginning of each meeting as being from Strategic Alignment. Nobody questions this. Nobody asks what I do. Nobody asks what Strategic Alignment does. The words "Strategic Alignment" function as a kind of corporate invisibility cloak — they sound important enough that nobody wants to reveal their ignorance by asking what it means.

I do nothing in these meetings. I listen. I nod when others nod. I look thoughtful when others look thoughtful. Occasionally someone asks for my input and I say something like "I think the team's instincts are right on this one" or "Let's make sure we're aligned on timing before we commit," and these phrases, which contain no information whatsoever, are received as if I have contributed something valuable. I have learned that corporate meetings operate on the same principle as theater: what matters is not the content of the dialogue but the fact that dialogue is occurring, witnessed by an audience. I am the audience. My presence validates the meeting's existence.

And the meeting's existence validates the department's budget. And the department's budget validates the subsidiary's existence. And the subsidiary's existence justifies the headcount that includes my position. I am a human proof-of-work. My body in a chair in a conference room is evidence that a meeting happened, which is evidence that a department functions, which is evidence that a subsidiary operates, which is evidence that the organizational structure above me is justified. I am a load-bearing node in a bureaucratic structure whose integrity depends on my continued presence at tables where nothing is decided and nothing changes and I nod when others nod.

I have a pension. I have health insurance. I have a corner desk in an open-plan office where my colleagues — other Interdepartmental Coordination Specialists, of whom there are seven — sit in identical chairs and attend identical meetings and say identical nothing. We don't talk about it. We don't need to. We all know. On Fridays, we go to lunch together. We talk about our weekends, our families, our plans. We are pleasant and normal and well-adjusted. We attend meetings. We are paid. We exist. In the economy of corporate sovereignty, existing is a job, and we do it well.