Melba

Writing & Notes

Essays on people, work and repair

Workplace

The quiet tax of belonging

Thursday, 30 April 2026

There is a colleague on many teams who used to come to lunch and now does not. There is a colleague who keeps choosing the desk by the window, and quietly negotiates whichever seat puts them closest to the wall in meetings. There is a colleague who declines the pub most weeks, and people have stopped asking. For some of them, the explanation is misophonia, and the cost is not their work. It is the social architecture around work.

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