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    • The real world is somehow worse, at least in a cyberpunk dystopia I can augment myself to have tank tracks or spider legs or some shit

      • Pretty big assumption that you'd be able to afford augments that were in any way cool helpful to you, or quality.

        What's far more likely is that you'll be "heavily incentivized" through "optional work benefits" to get augments through your employer to best suit their needs of you, effectively turning your body into flesh scaffolding for whatever it is cheaper for them to not fully roboticize. Refusal would, at best, prevent you from meeting metrics tailored to those augmented.

        These corporate provided augments will be designed by the lowest cost vendor, built by the lowest cost manufacturer, installed by the lowest cost surgeons, running software designed/programmed by the lowest cost developers. Imagine every little bug, frustration, design flaw, safety issue, batshit lack of sanity you have ever encountered with workplace systems/software/equipment/procedure now inherently installed into your own body parts.

        Companies will use this to offset costs to you. Like auto shops requiring mechanics to buy and maintain their own tools, but with whatever corners they can cut to save money. It's not our job to maintain your shoulder sockets, despite the fact that our chosen hardware regularly exceeds safe limits on force. Good luck proving that it's your employers fault in court after it's already injured you!

        Oh, the "safe lift leg and back support unit" has loose wiring that can come loose in scenarios involving certain repeated movements, which can cause a short, which can cause the unit to heat up to the point it's slowly cooking your remaining natural organs?

        Point is, regulation will never keep up with the horrors that companies will be able to justify against their employers. We're in for a long long time of more laws being written in blood and corpses

        Also, much like health insurance in the US effectively chaining people to a workplace, can you even imagine how much worse that would be when you got your arms from your job?

        One of the most often overlooked meta problems with the cyberpunk genre is that you pretty much have to focus on characters that are in universe upper class to have any stories that aren't just unendingly depressing in every single detail.

      • The problem is, it will probably be closer to deus ex, where people need to continuously buy expensive anti-rejection drugs, or their body will just reject the impacts

        So, not super looking forward to it

      • Tesla cyber tracks! Now with less fire!

  • hmm today I will pavlov my employees to associate their families with abnormally-high levels of stress. nothing bad will happen as a result of this

  • Oh that probably would have made me snap

    • Vision going red, frothing at the mouth, multiple-day blackout level stuff

      • As the intrusive thoughts come on, you succumb to disassociation, briefly fantasizing about hacking apart every last one of the bastards in the management suite. When you snap out of it, you're covered in gore and holding a severed hand. Behind you is a trail of blood and smoldering ash. Your direct supervisor bleeds out in a corner with a letter opener jammed into their aorta, and the general manager has been thoroughly dismembered, with various parts tied to the break room corkboard with headset cables.

        "I hate Mondays," you mutter to yourself.

      • I mean, after six months I was on the verge of hurting myself or someone else, so yeah

        Full-on berserker rage, tossing shit all over the place, both figuratively and literally

      • where we're going, we won't need eyes to see

  • Playing a montage of your family members when you're about to have a breakdown sounds like a threat. "Look at your loved ones, call center employee #253684. It would be a shame if something bad happened to them if you don't finish your shift."

    • It sort of is a threat when workers suddenly walking out on their jobs has an immediate material effect on the rest of the family. It's partly "think of how this will affect your family".

      If it successfully gets people to stay in jobs that they hate then it will slowly cause contempt for those family members.

  • If you can detect that your employees are having a rough time, you could, you know, give them a break.

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