Corporate Life Hack: Be More Like Al Roker.
Bare your naked discontent. Let it sour your features. Seethe on air. Stare into the camera, silently blink. Swizzle your day-drink in passive aggressive silence. Let the ice in the glance clink as loudly as the ice in your veins. Don’t let these white folks mistake you for docile; not when you’ve paid your jovial decades of dues. Make them understand you as human, as in possession of a loving home life, a highly accomplished, incomparably brave life-partner whose deep brown skin radiates against your own, a grown and high-achieving child, an expertise in meteorology trusted nationwide. Hold the best bits of yourself aloft; too many of your coworkers do not deserve them. Waste not want not, like all the almanac-reverers before you. Laugh only when it makes sense to, whether in times of true joy or in abject derision. Soften your timbre only when occasions call for it. Your merriment shall not be feigned. Neither shall your reproach. When your superiors fire your veteran, competent, colleagues of color and force them to deliver their own on-air farewells, fidget and frown on a show that prides itself on sunshine. Be too old for this shit and overjoyed about it. Settle into yourself. Prove nothing; there is no need. Bide your time. Do the work. Stand up to the sleazeballs among you. Know that they will always be with you; when you have vanquished one others will rise. Let every iteration know you are sick of their shit.
