Deep down in the depths of my office park, in the boring pre-fab concrete parking garage, a poorly scrawled piece of graffiti reads, "Do yuppies really like their jobs?" Besides the question of why someone would trek all the way out into this corporate wasteland to tag this one cinderblock, I would amend the question to: "Do yuppies really like their jobs? And how would they even know if they didn't?"

I suppose that isn't a fair question; it would be better to ask, "Who the fuck cares?" because I, for one, certainly do not. These are the commuters, the people who become so ingrained in their routine that they become the physical vessel through which the routine is carried out. Yes, in a way these people are The Boring, they are the ones who got The Memo if you will. And being the newest member among them (unwilling, but still a member) it is my duty to observe, and learn, and plan.

Things didn't always use to be like this out here on the commuting highways of Boston. Times were once good. Big dreams filled those cars and SUVs at 8:30 in the morning. Back in 1999 the business plans and venture capital flowed through the streets, and out on the highways you could feel it. Everyone appeared to be awake, alert and enjoying their Pete's coffee at the crack of dawn while zooming along in their fresh new silver Audi TTs, Mercedes SUVs and the occasional Corvette. People car-pooled. Being a reverse commuter on the Mass Pike allowed you to observe hundreds if not thousands of people going the other direction, stuck in traffic. I would look into their windows and see them happily discussing Big Ideas Dot Com and yakking on their cell phones. Sure they were lame. Sure their Big Ideas were actually inanity-with-a-web-site. But goddammit they at least looked like they enjoyed life and made for interesting eye candy.

After the dot-com bubble burst, all that changed. Route 128 is now the procession of the damned. Slick roadsters and moneyed German imports are mostly replaced by sensible cars. Pete's coffee has become Dunkin' Donuts. Car-pooling has once again disappeared. One Man One Car is the new mantra. No one is awake, and if they are, it is the scary sort of awake, the get-me-to-work-and-get-out-of-my-fucking-way-you-liberal-dickwads kind of awake. The commute is no longer a sunshine-morning party on wheels but a tightly lock-stepped dance of potential accidents and hate.

I cannot speak to the commute where one must sit in traffic for hours. I have some standards. If you would like to sit on overheating tarmac listening to Opie and Anthony on Wacky Rock Radio, be my guest. I'm talking about highways and commutes where every last car travels at least 60 mph even when there is only 2 feet between each car. Highways where drivers are too bitter or too stupid to understand that vehicles moving at constant velocity prevents traffic jams far better than gunning it up to the brake lights ahead and then slamming on your own brakes. Highways populated by an inordinate number of young "professionals" who just got rid of that old '88 Camry or Cavalier they had in college and now have what I like to call My First V6.

Yes those folks. Look, I'm not saying that everyone who owns a late-model Nissan Maxima or Altima is an asshole (they are fine cars). However, every asshole owns a Maxima. It is a law of the road. You can further granulate this law to see that -- for some reason -- female assholes drive Jettas and Passats. Again, I reiterate that the converse is not true. I know many fine people who drive these cars, but the next time someone cuts you off or weaves in and out of traffic at deadly speeds, note the car model. You will be shocked.

There is nothing you can do against My First V6 syndrome. Let it go. Occasionally you will be rewarded by the sight of a perpetrator pulled over by a copper or in some fender bender with a surly construction worker, but not often. People out here are crazy and you just have to live with it and pray that you aren't the unfortunate one to take a distracted SUV to the rear on any given workday. Believe it or not, there are long stretches of Route 128 where it is perfectly legal to drive up to 65mph in the breakdown lane. This fact seems to give many drivers a sense of entitlement and glee. The road to hell certainly allows travel on the right-hand shoulder.

Photo by Orion Smith

Holy Shit! Is that legal? Yes in fact it is.

On top of all that, there are drivers who don't perceive "driving" as their primary duty on the road. There are shavers, cell phone talkers, bagel cream-cheesers and even hopeless romantics. Submitted for your disapproval, an actual entry from Boston.com's Second Chances romance section:

Cute guy driving on 128 South near Waltham
You were the cute guy driving the silver Eclipse on Tuesday morning. I hope you were checking me out as much I as I was checking you out on our ride on 128. I was the blonde girl in the Camry. Unfortunately, I couldn't think of a way to get your number and you got off an exit in the Waltham area. Hopefully you will read this and email me so we can get together.

Again, just who the hell are these people? Do these pseudo-professional zombies actually know that their jobs and lives are just a sleep walk? Once they actually arrive at work, it would seem that their me-first attitude isn't left behind in the car. It strikes me as odd -- and somewhat depressing -- that the general ego and haughtiness expressed by these folk is in direct contrast to their overwhelming same-ness, their overwhelming Boring-ness.

How does a society as diverse as ours manage to produce so many managers, so many of the exact carbon-copy lives that one sees out here? Looking out from my window -- Quasimodo-like -- over the parking lot of a Staples superstore, general trends start to take shape....

They start out as your average guys and girls, not dealt the right card or wrong card in life, just the average vanilla-beige card. They come out of your average two- or four-year college and take their first job in sales -- simple sales jobs like cold calls and cold visits selling copiers or long-distance or market-proven synergistic teleconferencing solutions. Right away they've bought their first khakis, their first sensible blue or white button-down shirt (always keep a fresh pressed one on your car's hanger), their first of many sensible haircuts: very short-cropped for the guys and just above the shoulders for the gals. Soon you move up in the company, maybe you've actually hit a few sales quotas and your confidence grows. The risky promise of life's salary based on sales commissions makes the desire to look the part begin to take over. Soon NexTel phones are bought and slapped into a belt-holster. NexTel DirectConnect conversations are had at loud volume in the checkout line at Staples. (Actual conversation overheard: "So I said to her, 'It might taste like chicken honey but it smells like shit!'" *beep bloop!* "Yeah right on brother!") Now you're starting to do well. You get an electromagnetic ID card to swipe into your office. You go out only on weekends with "the guys" or "the girls" and drink Bud Light or Coors Light or whatever the hip liquor-derived semen-colored malt beverage may be. You have a cubicle and somewhere along the way you get a wife/husband and move out to the suburbs. Then comes the slightly oversized house on the half-acre lot in a sensible subdivision. Following in rapid succession comes the sod, the second car, likely a Camry, the larger house (the McMansion), the little wine cellar down in your family room, the surround-sound entertainment center, the trophy Viking stove that you rarely -- if ever -- cook on, the two kids (girls: Madison and Taylor; boys: Jacob and Taylor), the walls start to close in, the subtle rage at everything and everyone, the desire to vote Republican, the lack of guilt from doing so, the increasing belief that "family values" are real and defined by the half-acre you live on, the gnawing sense of dread, joining a softball league and playing in your work clothes, giving up on softball and thinking golf sounds like a good idea, the total lack of sex, the brief but profound "what if my life had?" moments, the Prozac and Wellbutrin and hormone replacement therapy, the occasional thoughts of violence, the fast-forward to death and burial in a sensible plot with a sensible epitaph surrounded by women wearing sensible black hats.

Everyday I take a break from work and walk around the landscape of office parks. People do not exist out here unless they are inside their office or inside their car. Sidewalks have long-since been torn up, a capitulation to the fact that everyone just drives everywhere. The only sights and sounds I can take from this environment are the rattle and hum of tires on pavement; the elevator's smell of perfume and cigarettes left behind by secretaries; the woman who sits in her running car in the parking lot every day at lunch, crying.

It's the lies contained within this life -- the belief that by fitting in, reading The Memo and tuning out doubt -- that really should trouble us all. The escapades performed on the ritual commute to and from work are just an extension of the soul behind the wheel. One day I'll leave this wasteland behind. For now I'm lucky to have a good job at a creative company. But those on the roads around me scare me not just by their driving but also by what they have become.