Millie
The cursor blinked on my laptop screen, a tiny, irritating pulse that matched the throbbing in my head. Another Monday. A full week of this soul-sucking corporate life stood between me and the weekend, and honestly, I was starting to believe the universe had a personal vendetta against me.
My perfect fantasies on paper felt galaxies away, while the harsh reality of my desk job strapped me into a torture chair five days a week. Why couldn't a knight on a gleaming black horse, or hell even a rich CEO, just swoop in and build me a library I could hide in forever?
The title of my job was longer than my patience: Enterprise Marketing Manager. Which, in reality, translated to professional firefighter of endless tasks, unpaid therapist for confused interns, and prisoner of meetings that should've been emails. I swear, the fine print must have also mentioned something about becoming a human encyclopedia for panicked juniors.
But today was different. Today, I was clinging to a shred of happiness, because this particular session of madness would be temporarily over in just a few days. Then I could escape back to the comfort of my home, and most importantly, to my mom's home-cooked meals for three glorious weeks.
It was the Durga Pujo season, after all. And being a Bangali (Yes, the real pronunciation! I will punch the next person who says "Bengali" in their fake posh accent), the thought of going home for the festivities, hearing the echoing dhak from the pandal, and meeting my best friend was enough to keep me sane.
My laptop screen lit up with a new meeting request from one of the AVPs, Steven. Another one. He had just finished one fifteen minutes ago. I hovered over "decline," sighed, then clicked "accept." Because really, what other choice did I have?
Steven droned on for an hour about "maximizing impact" and "leveraging synergies." My eyes glazed over, a polite smile plastered on my face as I nodded at intervals and dropped the occasional, "Yes, Steven," or, "That could work." Synergies? The only synergy I cared about was between my laptop's power button and the off switch.
Then my screen pinged with a chat message:
"Hey! You still breathing?"
"Yup. So far..."
"Steven torturing you again with one of his long-ass meetings? 🤣"
"He asked me for a BOFU strategy for this quarter and I am staring at the meeting screen for half the day! And it's just Monday!! By Thursday he'll be breathing down my neck for the report! How the fuck does he expect me to submit the work if he doesn't let me do it?!"
I stabbed the send button like it had personally wronged me.
"🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣"
"I'll break your teeth, then let's see how you laugh. Don't you have work to do instead of getting entertained by my sorrows?"
The culprit: James. Lead of the Alliance & Partnership team.
"Hey, don't get mad! I was just trying to keep you from plotting Steven's murder. And come on, you always manage to shine no matter the deadline. Do your thing!"
Annoyance cracked, replaced by a reluctant smile. James had his ways of cheering me up. I reacted with a ❤ ️ emoji. Something I'd never usually do when talking to a male colleague. But this was James, and everyone knew he played for the rainbow team. Safe territory.
Finally, the meeting ended. I threw myself into finishing as much of the month's work as possible. My mission was to avoid dreaded "urgent" calls from managers during my break. Not that my break was even much of one.
I was going home for three weeks, but officially, I'd taken only one week off. The single redeeming factor of my job was that it was remote as long as we were located in either the headquarter city in London or any other regional offices, and only called us in on rare occasions, and none of those were expected during my time away. Thank god.
