I Want Full Sugar in My Latte — So Why Do Capitalists Expect Me to Swallow the Bitterness of Overtime?

In the ancient, far-flung East,

There lives a brood of villains pretending to be gods.

They forge chains from mortgages and worldly burdens,

Taking children’s education and aging parents’ health as hostages.

They shackle fallen angels into cattle on their farms,

or disposable parts in their commercial machines —

Working day and night, forgetting rest, identity, and breath,

just to create the wealth that keeps these tyrants fed.

Until dismissal or death.

Gao Guanghui, thirty-two, a technical manager —

When two-thirds of life’s theme park should still lie ahead of him,

Was crushed by these false gods,

on a weekend that should have been his sanctuary,

And left this world with regrets beyond measure.

The absurdity deepens:

While doctors fought to save him,

His work chat kept buzzing — relentless, merciless.

Eight hours after he passed,

A colleague still assigned him a new task.

A man lies dead,

Yet the group chat roars on,

and the tasks keep updating —

as if he were still alive,

as if he owed them more.

This damned reputation for being “smart and capable.”

becomes the ultimate parody,

the cruelest mockery cast upon every working soul.

I turned to the real God for help:

“Please, let me never work overtime again.”

The false god said: “No. Four days.”

I said softly: “Spring, summer, autumn, winter.”

The false god snarled: “Three days!”

I replied calmly: “Yesterday, today, tomorrow.”

The false god froze: “Two days.”

I smiled: “Daylight, darkness.”

The false god gasped: “One day!”

And I laughed: “Every day.”

I pouted to the real God:

“When will robots, like bees, create everything humans need — endlessly and freely?”

The false god tried to lure me: “Just work harder. Just work overtime.”

I said, “Even if someone held a knife to my throat every morning,

I would still say, wait until I finish sleeping, then kill me.

If the future is uncertain, I choose this moment over your demands.”

Work is work, and life is life.

If I leave my job, another screw will take my place tomorrow.

But if one chair at my parents’ table is empty —

That emptiness lasts forever.

If my child’s graduation lacks a parent,

no compensation can fill that black hole.

There is no job on earth worth trading your life for.

My contract only requires me to work during work hours.

It does not give the company ownership of my soul or my body.

That work chat that keeps buzzing after hours —

That is the false god’s anxiety, not my responsibility.

Compared with life and death, it is smaller than a grain of dust.

If you’re reading this now,

in this cold corporate world,

place your hand over your heartbeat.

Hug your family.

Because apart from you and the ones who love you,

No one cares whether a screw is rusty or broken.

As long as we can still breathe,

live healthy, eat warm food,

and stand under the sun,

then simply existing — stubbornly, freely —

is the greatest rebellion

against this system that grinds humans down like spare parts.