The Employees is almost entirely written as roughly 100 "Statements" formatted as one-sided interviews or anecdotes, all of similar format with an unspecified interlocutor, usually fitting on a single page. This is a format I always feel a bit disconnected from, though it's usually used sparingly in pieces of a larger narrative. The lack of a clear narrative, or I suppose better to say the fragmenting of the narrative through these brief, non-linear, and anonymous viewpoints, leaves an emotional distance. A lot of horror writing is very visceral, the language designed to be urgent and embodied, and this interview-based approach is frequently the inverse, the language more reserved, clinical, professional. Placing the entire story at this remove provides a particular emotional affect. This approach was of course intentional, and overall I enjoyed it. It's a fast read, more of a novella really, given how short some of the chapters are.

The beginning introduces descriptions of a room dedicated to mysterious objects and the employees' relationships with them. It reminded me of visiting museums, something I haven't done since 2020, and of being nearly alone in one of the main galleries, I think at the Portland Art Museum, with many large paintings nearby but facing a large Guston illuminated by the skylights in the ceiling 25 feet above me. I'm not the biggest fan of Guston's work, I find it visually and emotionally confusing and frequently sort of disgusting. It's difficult for me and I guess the slightly mixed observations of the Statements about the objects in the book is what brought it to mind. These early sections of the book made me think of ekphrastic poetry, of attempts to sublimate an emotional response through the intellect so it can be expressed through language to others, which seems like a recurring theme in later Statements.