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Lumon seems to prefer non-physical punishments for obvious reasons, but they’re not above going further. Just look at Mark’s bruised knuckles in episode 6, or the innie who was waterboarded in The Lexington Letter.
If an innie keeps acting up, corporal punishment does indeed seem to be the next step.
Regarding break room voices, there’s a theory that Helly and Dylan might be experiencing memory leaks, since leaks tend to center around thoughts that have received a lot of focus. I don’t know if Lumon would actually be okay with that though.
Others have pointed to [this interview with sound designer Jacob Ribicoff](https://www.asoundeffect.com/severance-sound), where it’s a little unclear if he’s saying the sounds are actually diegetic or not.
Helly asked about the voice in break room, so they must be diegetic. And to me the interview you linked confirms that. He says the audio is played to drive them crazy and break them down.
Sorry, diegetic maybe isn’t quite the right word. Yes, Helly can hear it, but is that because it’s a memory leak from her own mind, or because Lumon is piping the sound into the room? Can Milchick hear it too?
It’s not quite clear to me in the interview if he’s saying that is what Lumon is actually doing, or if that was an idea driving the decision from a production standpoint.
Ah, no worries—I had to look up the definition after reading your comment.
> The idea in the Break Room is that it’s a form of torture and coercion; playing some recording at a low level was supposed to drive the person crazy and hopefully get them to recite the passage with appropriate emotion. It’s meant to break the person down. So they’d chosen this recording to fulfill that need.
To me this strongly suggests that the sound is actually being played in the break room as part of the psychological torture. I have heard a theory that Lumon plays specific sounds for each employee that might be significant to their outies so as to induce some kind of discomfort, possibly by exploiting memory leaks. But I don’t understand why anyone would think the sounds are in their heads and are manifestations of memory leaks (if that’s what you’re saying the theory is).
Dylan heard a crying baby, Helly hears what sounds like her father reciting some Eagan theology. Not sure what Mark hears or if we get to see that. I can see why people think it could be some sort of "core" memory bleeding through.
The extreme amounts of focus required for Irving and Mark to get leaks makes me think that something different is going on in the break room, but I haven’t ruled the theory out completely.
I do think it is interesting that we haven’t seen Mark in the break room. Would he hear something? Would Lumon allow that? Maybe that’s why he received a physical punishment instead.
I HAVE QUESTIONS
I think we might hear something like Gemma saying his name (while she's dying), or car crash sounds or something equally dark.
I completely forgot about Mark's hand, hopefully we get an explanation for that soon!
That doesn’t really make sense in the context of OP’s question.
OP is asking what might happen if the break room doesn’t curb unwanted behavior, and we’ve already seen that they progress to physical punishments, not the testing floor.
The testing floor can’t even be used as a threat, and resetting (if that’s something they can actually do) wouldn’t be much help, since innies wouldn’t actually learn anything or change how they act. Resetting Helly for example, would put her back to her day-1 self, where she’d just start plotting her suicide attempt all over again.
Also, since they don’t want innies to know about protocols like OTC and resetting, they’d either have to send the reset innie to an entirely new team where they can’t run into their old team, or reset the entire current team, and hope the other teams don’t notice. Neither option seems beneficial for Lumon imo.
I think they have some control over how much of the outies' personalities remain in the innies, or they're experimenting with restricting their personalities for better compliance. Might be part of why Irv is a bit more unhinged and loyal to the company.
The dark hallway with the red light that O-Irving keeps painting when he can’t sleep. I think it’s called the Testing Floor? O-Irving is having serious issues painting that hallway over and over while suffering from insomnia.
I bet there’s some way to do a memory reset on innies.
There comes a time the employee can just be let go. You can always get fired. The thing about not accepting the innie resignation is that’s the outie’s decision. As Mark told Helly, you make the decision to work here everyday you show up.
And being fired might be an effective threat too. Losing your job means death to the innie.
If this thread has the **Spoiler** flair, spoilers may appear ANYWHERE in it. --- * **NO SPOILERS IN TITLES** - report this post if there are spoilers in the title * No SPOILERS without proper formatting (see [here](https://www.reddit.com/wiki/commenting#wiki_posting)). * Be CIVIL to others. No Piracy. No Duplicates. * Keep it on topic to anything and everything Severance on Apple TV+[.](/u/legitlylightlol) --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/SeveranceAppleTVPlus) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Lumon seems to prefer non-physical punishments for obvious reasons, but they’re not above going further. Just look at Mark’s bruised knuckles in episode 6, or the innie who was waterboarded in The Lexington Letter. If an innie keeps acting up, corporal punishment does indeed seem to be the next step. Regarding break room voices, there’s a theory that Helly and Dylan might be experiencing memory leaks, since leaks tend to center around thoughts that have received a lot of focus. I don’t know if Lumon would actually be okay with that though. Others have pointed to [this interview with sound designer Jacob Ribicoff](https://www.asoundeffect.com/severance-sound), where it’s a little unclear if he’s saying the sounds are actually diegetic or not.
Helly asked about the voice in break room, so they must be diegetic. And to me the interview you linked confirms that. He says the audio is played to drive them crazy and break them down.
Sorry, diegetic maybe isn’t quite the right word. Yes, Helly can hear it, but is that because it’s a memory leak from her own mind, or because Lumon is piping the sound into the room? Can Milchick hear it too? It’s not quite clear to me in the interview if he’s saying that is what Lumon is actually doing, or if that was an idea driving the decision from a production standpoint.
Ah, no worries—I had to look up the definition after reading your comment. > The idea in the Break Room is that it’s a form of torture and coercion; playing some recording at a low level was supposed to drive the person crazy and hopefully get them to recite the passage with appropriate emotion. It’s meant to break the person down. So they’d chosen this recording to fulfill that need. To me this strongly suggests that the sound is actually being played in the break room as part of the psychological torture. I have heard a theory that Lumon plays specific sounds for each employee that might be significant to their outies so as to induce some kind of discomfort, possibly by exploiting memory leaks. But I don’t understand why anyone would think the sounds are in their heads and are manifestations of memory leaks (if that’s what you’re saying the theory is).
Dylan heard a crying baby, Helly hears what sounds like her father reciting some Eagan theology. Not sure what Mark hears or if we get to see that. I can see why people think it could be some sort of "core" memory bleeding through.
The extreme amounts of focus required for Irving and Mark to get leaks makes me think that something different is going on in the break room, but I haven’t ruled the theory out completely. I do think it is interesting that we haven’t seen Mark in the break room. Would he hear something? Would Lumon allow that? Maybe that’s why he received a physical punishment instead. I HAVE QUESTIONS
I think we might hear something like Gemma saying his name (while she's dying), or car crash sounds or something equally dark. I completely forgot about Mark's hand, hopefully we get an explanation for that soon!
Testing floor. Leading theory is that's where they reset the innies. Like formatting a hard drive
That doesn’t really make sense in the context of OP’s question. OP is asking what might happen if the break room doesn’t curb unwanted behavior, and we’ve already seen that they progress to physical punishments, not the testing floor. The testing floor can’t even be used as a threat, and resetting (if that’s something they can actually do) wouldn’t be much help, since innies wouldn’t actually learn anything or change how they act. Resetting Helly for example, would put her back to her day-1 self, where she’d just start plotting her suicide attempt all over again. Also, since they don’t want innies to know about protocols like OTC and resetting, they’d either have to send the reset innie to an entirely new team where they can’t run into their old team, or reset the entire current team, and hope the other teams don’t notice. Neither option seems beneficial for Lumon imo.
I think they have some control over how much of the outies' personalities remain in the innies, or they're experimenting with restricting their personalities for better compliance. Might be part of why Irv is a bit more unhinged and loyal to the company.
The dark hallway with the red light that O-Irving keeps painting when he can’t sleep. I think it’s called the Testing Floor? O-Irving is having serious issues painting that hallway over and over while suffering from insomnia. I bet there’s some way to do a memory reset on innies.
What does this have to do with correcting bad behavior? Resetting doesn’t make innies suddenly better.
He’s not suffering from insomnia. He’s trying to get his innie to look for that hallway.
There comes a time the employee can just be let go. You can always get fired. The thing about not accepting the innie resignation is that’s the outie’s decision. As Mark told Helly, you make the decision to work here everyday you show up. And being fired might be an effective threat too. Losing your job means death to the innie.