The buzz of one forever-dying fluorescent light mixes with the saddest scent in the world: burned hazelnut coffee. And another dreadful week begins.
Caitlin eyes me as I approach our pod, and her smirk makes my head pound. Rhonda looks up and then quickly diverts her gaze to mark my arrival. I wish there was a way to stop people from looking at your face.
It’s the sheepish grin Armin’s directing at me that does it. Heat creeps into my neck as the events of Friday pour over me for the millionth mental replay.
Caitlin’s keyboard smashes as I pass. I’m too distracted by my need for death to care, when a little yellow box in front of my computer catches my attention.
I stand over it protectively as I subtly slip the box open, and I’m greeted with a gourmet-looking rainbow sprinkle donut. Taped onto the inside lid, a sticky note reads: Welcome to thirty-three.—Cliff. There’s a tiny cat smiling on the bottom.
What’s wrong with this guy? He’s supposed to be the example of professional behavior?
Although . . . I suppose this is not, like, illegal, or wrong even.
I ball the note and shove it in the bottom drawer, where I file things that are likely garbage but don’t feel quite ready for the bin.
I eye the box again. It seems illicit. The only solution to this donut disaster is to hide it on my lap, underneath my keyboard tray, and break off pieces until it disappears.
A rush of pillowy soft sweetness hits. It’s the best donut in the world. But I can’t enjoy it.
Gregory pounds through the office door, all jolty and happy. He nods and names everyone he passes like the damn president of Clown Town.
I fake dragging my mouse across the screen as he approaches, the acid in my stomach creeping up to overpower the taste of sugar on my tongue. I shouldn’t have drunk more wine again last night. I should’ve learned my lesson from Friday. But I had one bottle left to finish, and now my head is like a pressure cooker.
That’s it. This week—and, more important, this weekend—no more drinking for me. I’m thirty-three now. Time to grow up.
I log in to start my usual routine, but the number on my email icon halts me. How can fifty-six new emails have arrived already?
A new record. I need coffee for this.
I stand up, careful to keep my focus on the rubbery grey baseboards as I make my way toward the copy room. I hear Caitlin whisper something to Rhonda under her breath as I pass.
Must not focus on anything human.
Far too many people are gathered in the kitchen. Their conversation dies off immediately upon my entry, but they don’t put much effort into hiding their smirks behind their coffee mugs. I know the kinds of things they talk about. I once overheard someone saying, “She’s so weird. I think she might come here and shoot us all. People do that.”
They’re all crowded around the coffee machine staring at their toes—several of them are members of the Coffee Club—which means I can’t steal their product right now. I fill a mug with hot water from the cooler instead, sweat gathering in my cleavage as their conversation continues in muted tones. The tea bags from 2017 in my desk drawer will have to do.
Back at my cubicle, I take an underwhelming sip of grassy tea as I click the first email: an office-wide notice about some tax form coming.
There’s no way this reality was the intended human experience.
The hollow splash of Barry Goodwin refilling his thermos-sized water bottle sounds from the cooler behind me. I hate that my cubicle is positioned where people are always walking past. Always on display while alone.
The next email is from Armin. My chest plummets. He never emails me directly. Is this about my drunk message?
Hey,
So I got an odd IG message from Jolene on Friday. Did you know it was her birthday? Shouldn’t the Morale Boosters have gotten a cake party together? I’m not the best person to point this kind of oversight out to Rhonda, but I think she forgot. Jolene said she was lonely, and I didn’t know what to say but it felt . . . sad. I’m terrible with this kind of thing. It’s awkward.
Armin
My heart almost falls out my vagina. Oh god. Oh no. I reread the message again as I slowly, but thoroughly, turn to stone. Anxious tingles shoot through my fingertips and earlobes. I’m pinned to my chair.
The email header draws my gaze. It’s addressed to Caitlin but not me.
He must have accidentally bcc’d me.
Another email appears in the chain.
From: Caitlin Joffrey
To: Armin Habib
Subject: Re: Jolene’s Birthday
Oh! Shit! Garret and I were at the bar when we saw she started an Insta. We were roasting the shit out of the weird stories she was posting.
I can’t believe she slid into your DMs! Imagine being 33 and messaging some colleague you hardly know and saying that you’re lonely. Maybe she was hitting on you?
Also, Rhonda didn’t want to throw a party given the situation with the email she wrote me. She’s so unstable. Tread lightly or you’ll end up chopped up and sewn together different.
—C
I want to both scream and never make another sound. If it weren’t for Rhonda’s leaning back and forth in her desk chair stirring up the air, I’d be certain I was dead.
But how did I manage to get bcc’d again?
And if I were going to murder Armin, I wouldn’t chop him up. I’d find some kind of industrial liquid to dissolve his body. Only a true imbecile wouldn’t understand that’s the best way.
My heart stops completely as another email pops in the chain. I’m somehow bcc’d again.
From: Armin Habib
To: Caitlin Joffrey
Subject: Re: Jolene’s Birthday
She wasn’t hitting on me. Anyway, I feel bad for Jolene.
Armin
I slump so low in my chair the plasticky metallic scent from the wiring under my desk tinges my nostrils. Pity from Armin, a guy who once reheated a day-old hot dog (bun, ketchup, and all) in the toaster oven, is too much to bear.
The quiet calmness within the office narrows in on me—I’m trapped. I need to run away. But if I run to the bathroom now, it’ll be a free-for-all to comment.
Then the worst thing happens. Garret lets out a cackle that carries all the way to my desk.
I can’t help it. I’m an absolute masochist. I peep in his direction—he’s looking toward Caitlin, whose shoulders are silently shaking as she looks back. She must have just messaged him.
I stare at the floor, wishing I could dig myself to the core of the earth. I used to think everything would be fine so long as I didn’t interact with the humans I work with. Maybe I didn’t try hard enough. Now I’ll never leave my desk. I’ll come into work before anyone and leave after they’ve all gone home. I’ll eat at my desk and get special glasses that block my peripherals. I’ll drown out everything with murder podcasts.
This will be a good life.
Except I already chugged my whole mug of tea, and the water bottle I had on the bus isn’t helping either. By ten a.m. I can’t hold it any longer. I’m thinking through the logistical possibility of keeping a pee bucket under my desk when it fully hits me that I’m considering peeing. In a bucket. Under my desk. As a way to remain incognito? I push out of my worn chair and head to the washroom.
I’m washing my hands with the cough-syrup-pink liquid soap when I truly notice my face, how pale, dry, and puffy it is. I’d put on eyeliner and clumpy mascara this morning, but they only make me look worse at this point.
It’s been a progression, my life here. When I first started, this place had appealed to me because it seemed like an easy place to just exist in. During month one, I signed up to bring drinks to a potluck Rhonda was managing. I bought a bunch of soda, but then I worried about the people who don’t drink soda, so I went back to the store to buy loads of juice and various kinds of milk. I dented my second paycheck pretty hard from the drama of it, and the whole thing kept me up at night. The day of the event, Rhonda laughed when I showed her all the drinks. She said, “Most people just end up drinking coffee.” And fuck me when Garret was like, “Where is all this milk from—did we get a cow?”
Minor, and yet the idea of being laughed at stopped me from breathing properly. After that, I decided that limiting my interactions was the best way to keep people from hating me. But over time, embarrassment became resentment. I was annoyed that Rhonda had me buy drinks if coffee and the watercooler would’ve done it. That was the first step down a road. The thing about annoyance is that once there’s a spark, you can find more things to stoke it. It grew and amplified between me and them. And eventually the abyss stared back.
Tears prickle my eyes. I quickly blink and wipe and suppress. The soft skin under my eyes is so familiar with the scratch of a hard beige paper towel.
I harden my stance and step out of the bathroom. I’m passing the copy room, eyes on the floor, when a cry—“Oh, happy belated birthday, Jolene”—comes from Rene Salinger. Her smile protrudes into her cheeks, fake and proud of it—she thinks she’s funny. But so do Marla and Garret, who snigger next to her.
“Thanks!” I try to keep my own smile solid wood.
I hate everyone here.
Back at our workstations, Caitlin holds her phone in the way she does to take a selfie from above: some strategically placed, color-coordinated folders in the background, and she tilts her head and does the lip thing. Soon her story will read #backtothegrind, and it’ll gravely misrepresent the aesthetic of our office into something not depressive.
When she first started, I thought she might be nice. She offered to help me with some data analysis sheets. Only, as she turned them in, she mentioned to Gregory that it was because I had trouble managing them on my own. She plays with Rhonda too, acts like she gives a shit about every detail of her tedious weekend errands. She joined the Morale Boosters and is very helpful, of course. But I overheard her calling Rhonda an “old lifer” to Garret one day. She said the idea of ending up like her, “an assistant forever,” scared the shit out of her. And she stared at my desk pointedly as she said it.
I make it back to my computer and tap my mouse to awaken the screen. A few new emails are already waiting for me. The first one is a notice from Cliff in HR about my computer update. It’s sent to Gregory, not me. How can I be bcc’d on that one as well?
But the following email is from Jared to Brenda, two people who work in sales and hardly know of my existence. I cross paths with Brenda only when she’s sitting silently in the bathroom waiting to do a number two at the same time as me, which devolves into a standoff of who can wait in the bathroom the longest. And like any other war, nobody wins.
Next is one from Rhonda to Gregory, asking for a replacement company credit card as she misplaced hers and had to cancel it.
Brandy and Josh are discussing some account that they mutually handle.
They keep going—email after email, none of them meant for me. I close out of my inbox and stare at the three pins on my cubicle wall.
Something is happening. Bcc’d in error this many times? A lot of freaky things would have to align for that to work.
Are they all in on it?
I click on Jared’s email again and try to hit reply. But all the emails are marked “read only.”
Then I see it. Directly beneath my main inbox folder, there’s a new one. I click on it, and it expands. Listed in alphabetical order are the names of everyone in the office. I click on one at random, and it’s as though I’m in their inbox. I can even see their sent items.
But whose account am I in? I click compose, and there’s a new option to expand in the “From” box. I can email from either Jolene Smith or Supershops Administration.
Oh my god.
Another email pops into my inbox. I hastily click to check it.
Then I vomit to death, resurrect myself, and vomit to death once more.
Because this one is to Gregory from who must be his wife—it’s an outside account. The words that pop out are “hard” and, curse it all, “cock.”
Right. His marriage still has spice—and that’s good, I suppose. I’ll just need to drink a nice glass of bleach to remedy the visuals I’m dealing with.
Deep breaths. He probably just has a chicken coop in his backyard. He’s having a hard time with the rooster. That’s all.
I click out of the email and briefly contemplate how my entire existence could have possibly led me to this.
Right. It’s time to talk to Cliff.