Severance Is an Allegory for Returning to the Office After Working From Home

The cultural dystopia for life in the 2020 is being forced back to the office after the freedom of WFH.

Note: I discuss the Apple TV show Severance in this post at the cusp of the second season finale. I do not really spoil major plot details, especially from season 2, so you can read if you haven’t seen the show. But I do talk about some of the plots, and the article will be more relatable if you have watched some of the show.

Severance has become a cultural icon in its second season. While the show hasn’t quite lived up to the hype that many of us fell in love with in the first season, it has still managed to become a so-called Water Cooler type show in an era with fewer and fewer of them.

The Mystery Box format of the show taps into the same kind of sentiments that Lost once did in the 2000s. It also helps that the show looks absolutely stunning with its aesthetics and practical effects. The mystery and visuals are no doubt a big part of Severance’s popularity. But I also contend that the show taps into something modern and close to a lot of us: the dreariness of suburban office parks.

These are places where many of us have to work, or have had to work at in the past. The effect is especially pronounced in an age where people who have tasted the work-from-home life are now faced with a return to the dreadful office park. In this case, Severance is not just an entertaining TV show, but a modern allegory for our urban spaces, workplaces, and social lives.

The office in Severance is our modern dystopia. Via Apple TV.

The Severance Procedure is Already Real (Sort Of)

In the show Severance, the severance procedure separates the consciousness of Lumon’s workers. When Mark Scout descends the office elevator, he becomes Mark S, an “Innie” version of himself with no memory or recollection of the outside world. When Mark S heads back up the elevator, he turns back into the Outie version who basically skipped a day’s work.

The Innies in the world of Severance do the mundane office tasks, while the Outies reap the payment. Obviously, the show plays into the psychology (and mystery) that comes with this kind of sci-fi procedure. But there is also a groundedness about being two people: an office you and a home you.

In the real world, most people have to dissociate to some degree when they go to work. Behaviors and characteristics that are fine at home or in social spaces are often not allowed in the office. Think about how many jobs have dress codes, haircut standards, or rules around speech in terms of cursing or crassness.

Dylan’s Innie is confident and funny while his Outie is timid and tired, illustrating how we can have two very different work selves.

This is why people need to unwind after work or loosen up when they step out of the office. At work, we are all playing a role of ourselves at work. Most jobs do not allow the real, full versions of ourselves. We must leave some aspects of ourselves at home.

It’s the same Innie-Outie relationship that exists in the show, just playing out in real life. Not to mention that the eyes of HR are always watching! These realities of modern work make a fantastical sci-fi show relatable.

Severing Alone

The loneliness epidemic in the US has long been documented. Perhaps the most famous exploration of the issue came from Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone (2000).

In the book, Putnam chronicles how Americans had become lonelier and more disconnected from civic or social institutions. While he doesn’t reach one simple conclusion, he does point to the suburbanization and car culture that dominated American life post-World War II.

Because of sprawl, Americans were living further away from friends and family. It was just harder to meet up with people due to the physical geography of our spread-out places; hence, the title of Bowling Alone.

Putnam does grapple with the possibility that workplace friends could have repealed some of the traditional socializations, but ultimately rejects this for a couple of reasons:

1. There was little evidence workplace socialization had increased.

2. Workplace bonds were often weak compared to other kinds.

3. Changes in the economy made work more transient.

Work-based ties now compete with place-based ties rather than reinforcing them. If your co-workers come from all over the metropolitan area, you must choose-spend an evening with neighbors or spend an evening with colleagues. (Of course, tired from a harried commute, you may well decide to just stay at home by yourself.) (p. 230)

Given this, it is more likely that workplace friendships would fizzle out once someone leaves the job. It’s just hard to maintain given the distances in a lot of places, drawing parallels to ‘retirements’ in Severance.

In the TV show, when an Innie leaves the office for the last time, it’s treated as a death. Their colleagues will never see them again. In the real world, when a co-worker leaves a company for a new job, it’s a kind of social death. There will be fewer and fewer happy hours until they all but disappear.

Burt’s ‘retirement’ is celebrated by his team but treated as a death by Irving, pushing him to the edge.

Of course, these are just generalities. Former work relationships can and do last beyond job changes. A lot of people do meet their partners at work, like Helly and Mark—it happens! The show is merely an allegory for what is common about work place friendship, not what is absolute.

The Real Severance Office Carries Our Post-War Sins

The characters in Severance are stuck in the deary Lumon office. The show’s producers chose perfect imagery for mundane suburban dystopia. The Lumon office is an ominous glass building surrounded by a parking lot. It’s also always cold and snowy in the show’s world, adding to the dread.

The building is actually a real place called Bell Labs Holmdel Complex, completed in 1962 for a subsidiary of AT&T, in Monmouth County, New Jersey. It was designed by a famed architect Eero Saarinen, who also did the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and Lincoln Center in New York City.

Unfortunately, being built in the sweet spot of post-war development, the place has some of the worst design sensibilities popular of the day. It is a giant glass square glass office building surrounded by a sea of parking in the middle of nowhere.

The real Severance office. Via Wikimedia.

There is nothing around except the compound itself. It is disconnected from everything else except for long drives. It is a noplace. The exact kind of place that no one really likes, no one wants to spend much time at, and that we have excelled at building since the 1950s.

The only thing around is what is in the compound. What is there during the workday is life, much like what the Innies face in the show. If we can help it, we would rather be anywhere else than a Lumon office, which is why the Outies don’t mind having no memories of being there.

The real building, though, has undergone some renovations and modernizations recently—and now goes by Bell Works, dubbing itself as “As urban hub. A little metropolis in suburbia.” It even is a full mixed-use development with residences. I find it funny that people may live at the office from Severance. Perhaps they will work that into season 3.

I guess they are trying to shed their dystopian label with the redesign.

Return to the Office After Working From Home

As most people know, the COVID-19 pandemic unleashed a wave of working from home, telecommuting, and digital nomads—whatever you want to call the phenomenon. Since 2020, it has become fairly normal to have a job that does not require coming into a physical office.

There has been much debate and controversy over this trend (which I will cover in the future), but many of the workers who were able to work from home loved it. They enjoyed the freedom and flexibility, they did not miss the traffic or transit, and they felt they were living a fuller life that was not dominated by the office.

The dream of working from home, though, is now coming to an end for many workers. With Trump, Musk, and DOGE forcing the federal workforce back to the office, or Jamie Diamon and other business leaders fed up with online work, people are being forced back into the office.

A lot of you were on the fucking Zoom and you were doing the following, okay? You are looking at your mail, sending texts to each other over what an asshole the other person is okay. You are not paying attention; not reading your stuff; and, if you don't think that slows down efficiency, creativity, creates rudeness and stuff, it does. Okay? And when I found out that people are doing that, you don't do that at my goddamn meetings. You go to meet with me, you got my attention, you got my focus. I don't bring my goddamn phone. I'm not sending texts to people. Okay? It simply doesn't work. -JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon

Like an Innie tasting the outside world, American workers saw how much better their life could be without a commute to a dreary suburban office park. People do not want to spend time at an office like Lumon, not to mention the annoyance of driving there. These places are soul-sucking, even for jobs that people like or love.

The hilarity of drab workplace culture in the 90s has given way to the delirium of returning to the office in the 2020s.

There is a reason why Severance has clicked for so many today, as a reflection of modern work culture. The 1990s had a sort of slacker culture rejecting the mundane office culture life, perhaps most iconically on display in Office Space (1999). The 2020s version isn’t funny, but rather dystopic due to what people experienced during COVID and after for those who stayed digital.

After experiencing work-from-home life for a few years, returning to the office is basically psychological torture, not unlike forcing an Innie to continue slaving away as a Macrodata Refiner. The changes coming from the current admin and others in the business world are creating this schism, forcing people back into the dreary dystopia.

Severed Working From Home

I don’t think most people would want to be severed. Instead, they want a job that they enjoy or tolerate enough. Part of that enjoyment or toleration is about the location and space. Terrible suburban office parks simply aren’t places where people want to be. Americans do like being home, even while working.

I must add that I do not like working from home myself. I simply do not get that much work done. I am even in my office on a Sunday writing this very article because I know I will not finish it while at home. Since I don’t work from home and do not have a traditional 9-5 as a professor at a residential college, I actually don’t have a personal dog in this fight.

But I must look past my personal preferences and biases. The desire to work from home is bigger than me. And I can see how it impacts so many people, including friends, family, my students, etc. It is actually sad that we are facing a return to what is so dreadful. The question around working from home touches so many issues and problems of today:

• Built environment—housing crisis—can’t live close to work.

• No public transport—must drive—terrible traffic.

• Falling birthrate—daycare and family—Parents in the workforce.

• Digital nomads—moving abroad—crowding tourist destinations.

• Loneliness epidemic—smaller social circles

• Young workers—mentorship and networking—fewer opportunities.

• Offshoring—jobs cheap abroad

• AI—replacing workforce—thinning out positions

The allegory in Severance may only offer something to say about a few of these items. Nonetheless, the list highlights the complications and questions around the new working culture. Each one of these issues probably warrants an entire article, too.

The brewing battle between management, government, and employees over returning to the office will look more and more like the Innies trying to escape their circumstances. I don’t blame them for trying. Most of us wouldn’t want to be stuck there either.

I don’t want to spoil too much with this last image.