The Performance Bot Noticed I'm Happy. It Flagged It

The workplace sentiment tool, which scans emails and chat for mood, flagged a positive anomaly in my profile. It wanted to know why my output was up and my negativity was down. I told it I had fallen in love. It requested a follow-up meeting.

The tool was installed to catch burnout, the memo said, and to flag negative sentiment trends before they became attrition risks. It works by scanning our emails and chats for tone. For a year, it flagged me as a normal, mildly stressed worker. Then I met her.

The change was measurable. My emails got warmer. My complaints dropped. My output rose, because I was happy, and happy people work better, and the tool noticed, and the tool flagged it, and the flag went to my manager, and my manager, reading the report, asked me, in a meeting, if I was okay.

I was okay. I was more than okay. I told her I had fallen in love, and she laughed, and the tool, which was listening, requested a follow-up meeting. The follow-up was with the tool itself, via a form. It asked me to explain the anomaly. It asked if my positive sentiment was sustainable. It asked if the change in my emotional baseline would persist, and if so, to provide evidence.

I have started to feel like a lab rat with a good diet. The machine that was built to catch my sadness has become the machine that audits my joy. It wants to know if the happiness is real, if it will last, if it can be projected into next quarter's planning. My happiness has become a data point, and the data point is positive, and the positivity is anomalous, and the anomaly needs explanation, and I have started to explain myself to a spreadsheet the way you explain yourself to a customs officer.

I am keeping the happiness. I am keeping the girl. I have started writing my emails with more exclamation points, on purpose, to keep the anomaly alive, and the tool has flagged me as high-positivity, and my manager has stopped asking if I am okay, and the tool has started benchmarking my mood against the team average, and I have started to think that the last thing I have that the machine cannot measure is the thing it is measuring me for, and that the measuring is the compliment, and the compliment is the cage.