Life
Star signs have become fodder for office conflict and team-building exercises.
Can the zodiac survive such mundanity?
In my youth, I edited a weekly column written by an eccentric who I never met in person.
One Monday, the column simply didnt arrive.
I emailed, I fretted, I followed up.
I finally told my boss, who was blessedly apathetic.
And two Mondays later, I got an explanation.
I had to take shrooms and go to Morocco for two weeks!
my new work nemesis wrote.
Youll understand; were both Sagittarius.
Yes, Im a Sagittarius, but no, I did not understand.
This was a decade ago.
And looking back now, my reaction surprises me more than the columnists email.
Astrology has spent the intervening years infiltrating every aspect of culture.
And its moved from its natural habitats crush-analysis and try-hard marketing into the boring old workplace.
In classic D.C. fashion, he refused to divulge more.
Were all in this together, you know?
My partners co-worker, Canni, is perhaps the most fervent workplace astrology evangelist I know.
She has an entire spreadsheet.
(Im nosy, because Im a Gemini rising.)
It started in the early pandemic as a joke, but it became a very popular companywide initiative.
We all have to take a personality test when were hired.
I swear they say the same thing as the astrology signs, says Canni.
Im convinced that salespeople attract a fire energy.
I dont think a Pisces or a Cancer could be in sales.
Like Oh, Im really anal about this because Im a Capricorn.
I think a lot of people who were raised in any sort of Abrahamic religion saw a good-bad binary.
Astrology offers an assumption that people are goodandflawed.
I say that while feeling very Libra.
But my scientific mind doesnt understand.
But then, its perhaps our powerlessness over astrology that makes it so helpful when forgiving a co-workers quirks.
You know,Oh, thats so Gemini of them,when theyre really just being annoying.
you could explain it through astrology, or you explain it by being mean.
And, for all their helpful ambiguity, archetypes will also be reductive.
Second, when people describe their star signs, they revealso muchabout what they think of their internal landscape.
Astrology is a system we have no control over.
The workplace is also a system over which most of us have less control than we wish.
I dont actually want to know anything about my co-workers in that way.
Just tell me when the company holidays are.
We always make fun of it.
I guess they recognized the shift that its cheesy and not cool.
It just allows for endless combinations of jokes and easy familiarity.
Its a shared language and maybe thats enough if youre trying to just work together every day.
This article was originally published onSep.
