If you’ve ever been to a museum or on a school field trip, you may have had a tour guide walk you through a historical exhibit of 19th century households or of ancient Mesopotamian agricultural tools.
Now, a current TikTok trend suggests that one day in the future, those exhibits will be the modern workstation: standing desks, Zoom meeting headsets and all. The viral series titled “historical tour of a corporate worker’s desk” by marketing professional and content creator Heike Young imagines what that will look like.
“Now in those times, it would have been really common for a corporate worker to sit at a desk, much like this one, and be on calls all day,” she says in the skit, now with over 116,000 views. Behind Young a standing desk is set up with two screens, one for work and the other for online shopping, she says. The desk is scattered with an assortment of beverages, or “brown liquids”, and plastic food containers and packets.
“Believe it or not, this worker would’ve actually been considered very lucky to have a job like this,” she continues. “People would submit hundreds of applications and submit themselves to many humiliation rituals just to get a job like this one.”
In another video, Young highlights a few common tabs workers would have had open on their screens.
“Yes, Amazon. That’s the same name as the extinct rainforest, that’s right,” she replies to a “question”. “We got some history buffs in here.”
She also educates on the linguistic practices of the period, more commonly known as business jargon or “work voice”.
