Human Resources

At my feet, a thin stream sloshed against my shoes where a shadow had been. Grimy fluorescent bulbs droned overhead as a numbness crept up my legs. Loud and triumphant, a tide broke through the long hallway’s unnatural silence, rolling furiously closer to drown me in darkness.

Earlier that day

The first snowfall of the year trickled in silently on this Friday afternoon. The sound of a beast stirred in the vents above in our old facilities and campus services building, the ghost of a millennium past. Alone at the Human Resources reception desk, I stared into the maze of cubicles outside our office. A space heater blew tepid air at my ankles, no match for the cold nesting all year round inside the walls.

In the past several decades, architects had strategically built the rest of campus farther and farther away from our industrial eye sore. Funds didn’t exactly flow into our building, as told by its anachronistic anatomy: drab carpets inside, eroded aggregate outside. Bulletin boards crowded with text-dense fliers and announcements.

I liked the place quiet, doubly so on Fridays.

The events of our earlier staff meeting and what had followed swarmed around my head.

"We really need to step up our game in our presentation to new employees," Michelle, our director, said as she flitted her little bird-blue eyes around to the only other two people on the team she liked to make eye contact with.

Staff meetings had been easier over Zoom, when I didn’t have to be close enough to see the leathered scaling of Michelle’s skin. The room was silent with an absence of ideas from either of them. And what did she even mean by that? None of us knew. Francisco, her eyes begrudgingly fell on me.

"What’s taking so long with that position description for the Trades department?"

"I sent it to you yesterday for review," I said.

She squinted at her laptop and tapped her mouse, her chin drawn down as the color drained from her face.

"Maybe you should send it to the whole team next time," Rachel said. The black eyes beaded inside her sheet-white face flickered to Michelle for approval. Mommy’s favorite.

"Yeah, because I don’t see it here," Michelle sat up straighter with the newfound boost of indignance. "You really shouldn’t keep them waiting any longer."

The walls of my skull vibrated with a deafening ring. My feet turned to bricks. "I’ll send it to everyone right away," I said.

Michelle sighed. Then she smiled at Rachel and said, "By the way, let’s everyone congratulate Rachel on acclimating to her new position, she’s doing very well." She tapped the table in front of Rachel as Rachel tipped her head and smiled. Proud little girl. She tipped her head so far, I saw the black roots of her platinum blonde dye job. I exchanged eye contact with Libby, who folded her lips into a straight line as I typed a Teams message to her.

La-dee-daa, I typed. She smiled.

"Olivia, how about you start presenting in person again?" Michelle said.

Libby’s smile fell, the glare off her glasses imitating a fog of rage. She hated giving presentations and so did Michelle. "Why? It’s so much easier when we do it on Zoom, everyone gets to just go back to work."

"I think it’s better in-person, Rachel said. "I know I prefer in-person interactions more."

I wondered if anyone in her life actually preferred an in-person interaction with Rachel.

Libby said, "Well, I just don’t think that’s fair for the custodians to have to step away from their work when we have other options."

"I agree, in-person is just better," Michelle said. "Let me know if you have any questions about that, Olivia." She pretended to check another email.

My Teams messenger lit up with a GIF from Libby of a man slamming his head against the wall.

As I returned to my desk after filling my water bottle, I met Rachel’s gaze as she lingered in Michelle’s office. When she saw me, she lowered her voice and hunched down closer to Michelle’s desk. Seconds after I sat down at reception, Michelle’s office door slammed shut. Half an hour passed, and then Michelle’s door opened again.

“No seriously,” Rachel said as they both stood in the doorway now. “I was going to take my kids to that big arcade in Binghamton, but it’s in that super seedy area.”

“Oh no!” Michelle cooed.

“We just took them to Syracuse. Which is a lot sketchier, but oh well!”

A cascade of synchronized giggles. Eventually, Rachel returned to her own office and Michelle left to “work from home” for the rest of the day.

Libby rushed up to my desk, head first and arms swinging like she was late to something else but still had to drop by. She smacked both hands down on the counter in front of my desk and leaned over it, her cobalt eyes pouring into me so fast they could have knocked me over.

“Franky, what the fuck? Can you believe that shit?” she whispered. “Like presenting it in person is going to make boring shit less boring somehow.”

I shook my head and muttered, “You know how hard it is for Michelle to think for longer than 10 seconds.”

Steph stepped back and put one hand on her forehead and the other on her hip, “This is giving me a migraine, I might just go home.” Then she paused to stare at the empty bulletin on the peeling yellow wall for a few seconds.

“Yeah,” I said. “You should probably just take a day off--”

“I can’t,” she said to the wall. “I already used a sick day last week to go home and take care of my mom. Her and my dad got into this huge fight, so I had to tell her how amazing she was and how she deserves better. The last time they fought like that, I was in high school.” She shuffled back and forth and crossed her arms, then turned toward me again but couldn’t look at me yet. “It’s fine, I’ll just go home early or something. Anyway, how are you doing since your…talk with Michelle last week?”

I nodded as I consulted the bulletin board myself. “I’m sure another promotion will come along. You know, in a decade or so.”

“Probably not,” Libby said. “Hey, maybe you can have my job when I leave next year!”

I scoffed. “Thanks,” I said. If you leave within the next three years, I’ll be shocked, I thought. In a slight pause, she frowned as if she heard it. I quickly followed with, “Or maybe some big-dreams-low-budget nonprofit is looking for their next diversity hire.”

“It’s really not so bad here, I guess,” she said. I wanted to shake her. “At my old job, I was losing my hair. Here, I just don’t sleep at night.”

I forced a laugh and turned back to my monitor screen. “Guess it’s just me who’s miserable, then.”

“I totally get why though,” her voice quieted. Then she shrugged and scratched the dry spot on her nose. “Well, I’m going to go back to dissociating in my office.”

“Have fun.”

Within the next hour, both Rachel and Libby filtered out, an unassuming silence left in their wake. The air stank of sewage gas.

Finally, I stood up and emerged into the tranquil silence of the architects’ cubicles, quiet as a cemetery since they all went remote mid-covid. Motion-detector lights snapped on as I strode down the length of the pit. I passed a mountainous fax machine beside the Keurig table framed with boxes of 8x11 on the floor. My fisheye reflection strode by in a convex mirror as I exited into the hall.

An idle 10 minutes scrolled by under my thumb in Instagram reels and texts with my boyfriend, Nick.

How’s work? Nick’s message read.

I replied, Maybe the things I wanted in a career aren’t even real, I replied. Or maybe I just don’t have anything to give after all.

I closed my eyes and kneaded the strain in my brow, turning my phone over to not have to reread what I sent. What was I going to do now, how many times was I going to fail? All my friends with their post-grad corporate consultant jobs, changing the world, flipping organizations like houses, and I was stranded in a string of failures. Fired from the first well-paying job in the actual field I studied. A sales job surrounded by husks walking around as humans. Some vicious narcissist’s personal assistant. Now a bottom-wrung HR job.

My phone battery blazed red, 15%.

Look, Nick’s reply read. I know what Michelle said feels like another door slammed--The bathroom door bellowed with a hard twist, followed by three knocks.

I hesitated, and they punished my silence with three more insistent knocks. My heart gaveled in my throat. Relax, I told myself, it’s probably just Patty trying to clean.

“Yeah, I’m--” I cleared my throat, “I’m in here.” A pause before the door creaked incessantly and then cut off. The floor swam, and the siren in my head returned. I bent my neck to see under the stall, but there was nobody.

Sighing, I hunched over my knees again, and that’s when I saw them.

Under my stall door, a pair of polished, black Oxfords pointed their toes in my direction.