Four lines, about a dozen words, and a whole working life is accounted for. The poem's logic is that of a ledger: the title praises "the good worker," and what follows shows what that goodness costs. The speaker has no name, no feelings and no verbs. All that remains is an office, a snack and a bed.
Start with the opening line, "Me and the office: one". The speaker says "Me," not "I," the grammar of someone acted upon rather than acting. The colon works like an equals sign, and "one" sounds like a note of harmony, as if the worker were happily at home in the job. But the line break makes us wait, and the next line is a single word: "wen." A wen is a harmless lump under the skin, a cyst. It has no purpose and does nothing except grow on its host. The sentiment of unity curdles. Whether the worker is a growth on the office or the office a growth on the worker, the poem doesn't say, and the ambiguity is part of its sting. Either way, being "one" with the job means being a swelling, not a person.
The shape on the page does much of the arguing. The lines run roughly six, one, three and four syllables. After the long first line, "wen." drops like a stone, and its isolation makes the word look like the lump it names. The poem then rebuilds in small steps, "A pasty" and "A merry bed", as though the speaker were recovering from a blow. There is no end rhyme, but the sounds still tie things together. The short *e* of "wen," "merry" and "bed" runs through the poem, and "wen" and "bed" nearly rhyme, so the two ends of the day, the lump and the bed, seem to answer each other. The "m" of "Me" returns in "merry," a quiet link between the self and its only cheerful moment.
"Pasty" is the most playful word here because it can be read two ways. As a baked pastry, it is the sort of food eaten quickly at a desk, portable and unceremonious. As an adjective pronounced differently, it describes the pale, unhealthy complexion of someone who rarely sees daylight. Both readings fit the worker, and the article "A" makes the pasty as anonymous as a single item on a conveyor belt. The poem doesn't need to choose between food and face, because the worker has become what he eats and how he looks.
Then comes "A merry bed." Beds are not normally merry, so the adjective seems borrowed from whoever lies in it, or from the relief of getting there. It could be sincere: after the office, bed is the one place of cheer. It could also be bitterly ironic, with "merry" as the forced brightness of a greeting card. A reader might also hear a hint of something more bodily and playful in the word, but the poem stays too clipped to confirm it. What matters is that the list ends on rest, not on any achievement. Work, food, sleep: a day compressed to three nouns, with nothing in it that the worker has chosen.
That is why the title matters so much. "The good worker" may be sincere praise, the label an employer would use, or it may be the poem's sharpest irony. If it is praise, the poem asks what that approval rewards: a person so absorbed in the job that he is reduced to a lump, a lunch and a bed. The poem makes no speeches and does not complain. The speaker seems to accept the situation, and that calm is what makes it unsettling.
The poem is worth reading because it does so much with so little. A longer protest against office life might sound preachy or familiar. Here a single odd noun, "wen," does the work of a paragraph, and the reader has to complete the argument. The poem's brevity also works as a form of imitation: it is as small and shrunken as the life it describes. You can read it in seconds, and it lingers because it shows how easily a person can be reduced to a few nouns.