Front Page · Wellbeing Desk
Man Reclassified As "Elevated Nocturnal Health-Seeker," Survey Says He Is Thriving
He tells the company's wellbeing survey he is fine. By his phone's own account, three hours later, he was not — and only one of them was asked nicely.
At half past twelve, on World Mental Health Day, a man opens HR's wellbeing survey, right on schedule. The hour is blocked out on his calendar for exactly this reason. He rates himself a nine out of ten, generally fine, no concerns to report. The box for concerns stays blank, on purpose.
The two documents agree completely, and neither one has asked him a real question.
Three hours earlier, by his own account, nothing had happened at all. By 1:40 in the morning, something clearly had. He stood between two bathroom mirrors, the way he does most nights. He angled the hand mirror until the landing light caught the bald patch at the back of his head. He counted it, the way he counts it most nights. His phone lit up mid-count, a message from nobody important. The tab, still open on the hair-loss forum, closed before the screen finished loading. He went back to bed. The app logged it as a win.
The company's wellness app has been watching the whole thing, quietly, since July. It was installed on his work phone for his own benefit. It does not use the word balding anywhere in its reporting. It has filed the whole pattern under its own category: Elevated Nocturnal Health-Seeking.
The category comes with its own trend line, and the line keeps climbing. His manager praised the team in the wellbeing Slack channel for its most improved engagement. He was named twice in the message, both times at the top. A leaderboard followed soon after, ranking staff by proactive health-seeking minutes. He leads it by a wide margin over a colleague who merely walks at lunch. Nobody has been asked what they were looking for, only how often they looked.
HR's year-end review now uses the same phrase, word for word: demonstrates strong, proactive health-seeking behaviour, particularly overnight. It was written by a manager who has never seen the bald patch. He has never been invited to look. The review even cites his survey score as supporting evidence: nine out of ten, generally fine. The two documents agree completely, and neither one has asked him a real question.
The message at 1:40 a.m. was his wife, three rooms away, asking if he was coming to bed. She has known about the mirrors and the forum for years. It started the year he bought concealer fibres and told her they were for the garden. She stopped minding the patch roughly the week it started mattering to him. Nobody has asked her either.
The patch, as of this printing, is no different to the one logged in July. The app has no field for "already knew." It has a streak counter instead, and the streak is going extremely well.
This newspaper runs its own wellbeing survey every November, scored internally and read by nobody. It is filed under Staff Morale. Last year's results were rated strong. Two reporters resigned the same week.