Most tech workers who wear ID badges don't have to "wake five days a week at the same damn time".

Also, you have to write stupid annoying shit that has no bearing on important things, and you're not involved in making anything meaningful.

Your job is basically to be entertaining enough that the passers-by throw a few coins in the music-grinder's hat.

So dance, you little monkey, dance!

/hug

The world is a better place because you're in it.

Are you working on any stories right now?

Some of those 8-to-5ers are writers, like you Sherman, and they get up every fucking day at dawn, put their security (not ID) badges on and go to work so they can, DUH, support their asses because nobody's thrown endless NEA grants at them so they can contemplate their navels while re-writing the same fucking story over and over.

And drawing sweeping generalizations about people because of their apparent zip code is, kinda, prejudiced, ya know? (Kinda like saying all Indians who live on reservations are unemployed.) I'm sure the sad shits stocking fruit in Whole Foods and the tired deli attendants don't feel "privileged" to be working for a corporation who's founder is staunchly apposed to national healthcare, fights every employee who gets laid off and then tries to draw Unemployment and hires non-union construction workers to build his ugly markets.

@ctmcmull

It is you who is the monkey. Mr Alexie has done more for culture than you'll ever be able to design

Who's the one dancing for the man?

@5: Oh, Joe -- say it ain't so.

why do you online commenters have SUCH STRONG REACTIONS to this column? i personally like it quite a bit, and find it perceptive, self-aware, entertaining, and wryly funny. but whatever your opinion, the man is clearly just having a bit of fun. it can't be more than a hundred words. does the flippancy of his tone offend you when juxtaposed with his substantial reputation? is this one of those "i could paint that pollock situations"? chill the fuck out.

I generally agree with Alexie's take on SLU. The office park culture that has taken over this city is terrible.

And SLU in particular has become clueless asshole central. It's the heart of the Borg invasion, as they invade south of the shipping canal, having assimilated Fremont, and now their spreading to Capitol Hill, too.

In a nutshell, it's very simple: the city's planning here has failed terribly, and for a long time. The Powers That Be in Seattle have conflated corporations with culture, and money, with fulfillment.

You can't build a great city simply by kow towing in front of regional plutocrats such as Bezos, Allen, and Ballmer, and think that because they will move their Borg-like technology corporations and money into town, that somehow you're making a place where people want to live.

In particular, at SLU, what has resulted is a born-yesterday, ugly pastiche of cell-block style dormitory structures on top of a few generic, bland corporate chain services, surrounding a bunch of office cubes.

I've imagined from time to time that if you walk through that "neighborhood" at this point without your little corporate ID card, the police will show up, and that access to your dormitory ("condo") will be shut off at the same instance as access to your cube, if you are fired or let go for some reason.

What's happened at SLU certainly does include "jobs"; but worshipping at the altar of the "job creators" is not going to make Seattle a great place to live. What's happened at SLU is the antithesis of cultural life creation. You can't build a city out of 100,000 computer programmers whose lives are spent between home computer screens and work computer screens.

All growth in this city in now premised on importing as many members of this exceedingly narrow and lifeless segment of the population as can be done.

Again, it feels like a Borg collective has attacked and begun assimilation of the city. All city blocks are starting to look the same in our "neighborhoods", the same cookie-cutter mixed-use cell block style of structures, with the same people coming in and out of them.

I've been here nearly 20 years; I don't see where the last 10 years of development is creating a viable or livable cultural life for the city. It sure as hell isn't creating any form of diversity whatsoever, that's for sure.

Here's Sherman translated more succinctly: "Badges? BADGES? We don't need no steenkin' badges!"

Witness the great herds of roaming nerds and vast daily migrations of geeks and clerks. It's simple. Join the herd or be the lion.

You are wear your badge on your sleeve, Mr. Sherman, and I would recognize you anywhere.

@9 I didn't know we were lifeless. Shall I stop socializing, being politically active, volunteering, and spending a lot of money on local businesses in order to conform to your stereotype of tech people as lifeless automatons?

Go fuck yourself.

What a bunch of dumbass comments. He wasn't picking on you. Jesus anyway.

While I am sure there was an amount of hard work involved, It is extremely arrogant for someone with a certain gift, and a certain cultural background that appeals to white middle class urbanite readers, and the good luck to be a working paid professional writer, to wonder why some people work so many hours and work so hard for a company. It is so they can try to build a life for themselves and their families. And if you are fortunate enough to not have to do that, good for you. But no need to gloat, or pretend that you somehow are sacrificing or giving of yourself. If it is such a terrible soulless place, why are you even in south lake union? Did you buy a condo there or something. Must be nice. Quit trying to pretend you ar anything but another fortunate, monied denizen living way better than most americans.