Chapter 12

The next week arrived the way most weeks at Shizz Company arrived—quietly, ominously, and with the subtle emotional energy of a horror movie soundtrack that only Risa seemed able to hear.

Monday morning, she sat at her desk staring at her calendar notification.

1:1 with Rachel – 10:30 AM

Risa sipped her coffee like it was about to abandon her emotionally.

The past seven days had been… productive. If by productive, one meant juggling nineteen U.S. distributors, daily Customer Service responsibilities, transcoding, Power BI refreshes, Sales File corrections, BOL Tracker updates, and building a growing collection of product flashcards that now rivaled her college notes in both volume and existential despair.

She had studied.

She had absolutely studied.

Her apartment looked like a Sephora had exploded into a library. Sticky notes were everywhere. Product names haunted her dreams. She had once woken up at 2:14 a.m. whispering, “Baby Plus Hydrating Serum, retail, 30 ml, SKU variant 042,” before realizing she was not, in fact, being hunted by moisturizers.

So when 10:29 rolled around, Risa straightened in her chair, adjusted her headset, and clicked Join like she was volunteering for psychological combat.

Rachel appeared instantly, smiling in that professionally pleasant way that made Risa’s fight-or-flight response stretch its legs.

“Hi Risa,” Rachel said brightly. “How’s everything going?”

Risa smiled back, matching the tone perfectly, like two actors performing a play titled Pretending Everything Is Fine.

“It’s going well,” she said. “Busy, but good.”

Rachel nodded. “Good, good.”

There was a pause. The kind of pause that suggested a trap door was about to open.

“So,” Rachel continued, “have you reviewed the products?”

Ah. Here we go.

“Yes,” Risa said quickly. “I reviewed them on the website, and I also went over the products in person with Evelyn and Sophia.”

Rachel’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “Oh, that’s good. What products have you learned about?”

Risa straightened slightly, grateful for what felt like a normal question.

“Oil Me, Baby Plus, Heart’s Phone,” she began confidently. “Also the Glow Mist line, the Restore Cream sets, and some of the travel kits. I’ve been trying to group them by category so it’s easier to—”

“So what does YOLO stand for?”

The question dropped into the conversation like a bowling ball through glass.

Risa blinked.

“YOLO?” she repeated.

“Yes,” Rachel said patiently.

Risa scrambled through her mental flashcards. She saw the bottle. She saw the packaging. She saw the stupidly cheerful font. She could literally picture the product sitting on the shelf between two serums that cost more than her weekly grocery budget.

“Your Oil Loves Oil,” she said, relieved when the words came out smoothly.

Rachel nodded once.

“What product category is it?”

Risa froze.

Her brain flipped through mental folders at high speed.

YOLO.

Oil.

Oil Me adjacent.

Shelf… right side… near styling sprays… or was that retail display rotation? Was it bundled? Was it—

“Wha—?” she said before she could stop herself.

Rachel leaned forward slightly.

“Retail or Styling?” she asked, voice sharpening just enough to feel like a paper cut.

Risa’s mind blanked completely.

Retail sounded right.

Styling also sounded right.

Both sounded like answers that could ruin her career.

“Uhhh…” Risa said eloquently.

Time stretched. Her heart thudded. Her brain grabbed onto the first rope it found.

“Styling…?” she guessed.

Rachel’s face changed immediately.

Not dramatically. Not loudly. But the shift was unmistakable—the warmth draining from her expression like someone had unplugged it.

“Risa,” Rachel said slowly, “didn’t I tell you to memorize all products by next week?”

Risa’s stomach dropped.

“I did try to memorize them,” she said quickly. “I just—wasn’t able to remember all of it clearly, I guess.”

Rachel shook her head.

“No, Risa,” she said, her tone flattening into something sharp and clinical. “I told you very clearly that I needed you to memorize all of it by next week.”

There was a beat.

“Why didn’t you do it?”

The question landed heavily.

Risa blinked.

She opened her mouth, then closed it again.

Why didn’t you do it?

She had done it.

She had studied every night. She had made flashcards. She had dragged Evelyn and Sophia into impromptu shelf tours. She could draw half the product packaging from memory like some deeply cursed art student.

She hadn’t forgotten the product.

She had forgotten the category.

She tried again, voice careful.

“I really did try to memorize them,” she said. “I spent time reviewing them, but I guess I didn’t retain everything perfectly yet.”

Rachel’s expression didn’t soften.

“No,” she repeated. “Why didn’t you do it?”

The repetition hit differently this time.

Risa stared at her screen, her brain scrambling for an answer that wasn’t I DID.

Because what was she supposed to say?

“I studied but my brain is a human organ and not a corporate server?”

“I tried but there are literally ninety to one hundred products and I also have nineteen distributors and SAP runs like it’s powered by Victorian steam engines?”

“I forgot one category and now I feel like I’ve committed tax fraud?”

Instead, she swallowed.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I’ll review it again.”

Rachel leaned back slightly, looking unconvinced.

“You need to take this seriously,” she said. “Product knowledge is basic. You’re in Operations—you should understand what we’re selling.”

Risa nodded.

“I do understand most of them,” she said gently, attempting to redirect. “For example, Baby Plus is retail-focused, and the Restore Cream kits fall under—”

Rachel raised a hand slightly, cutting her off.

“That’s not the point.”

Ah.

“By next week,” Rachel continued, “I need you to have everything memorized.”

Everything.

Risa nodded again.

“Yes,” she said.

Rachel spent the next few minutes reiterating expectations, circling back to product familiarity, emphasizing accountability, and somehow making Risa feel like she had personally betrayed the concept of skincare.

Risa apologized twice more, nodded approximately seventeen times, and took notes she would later stare at without understanding why they made her want to lie down on the floor.

Eventually, mercifully, Rachel concluded with, “Let’s check back next week.”

The call ended.

The screen went black.

Risa sat completely still.

Her headset remained on. Her hands rested on her keyboard. Her coffee had gone cold sometime around the second “Why didn’t you do it?”

She stared at her reflection faintly visible in the monitor.

Defeated felt too dramatic.

Crushed felt too theatrical.

She felt… stapled to her chair.

Her brain replayed the conversation on loop.

YOLO.

Styling.

Wrong.

Why didn’t you do it?

She blinked slowly.

Did other people have to memorize all the products?

Did Fred get quizzed?

Did Rachel ever sit him down and ask him to categorize serums like he was preparing for the Beauty Industry SATs?

This wasn’t school.

She had graduated from school.

She was fairly certain there were supposed to be fewer pop quizzes in adulthood, not… more, but with health insurance.

Was she not doing her job properly?

She glanced at her inbox.

Thirty-two unread emails.

Three distributors asking about delayed shipments.

Two Marketing requests.

One Slack message from Supply Chain.

One SAP report still loading in the background like it was personally offended by progress.

Her job was happening. Constantly. Loudly. Aggressively.

But the conversation had been about… product trivia.

She pressed her lips together.

Honestly, it felt ridiculous.

And worse—it felt like she had been treated as if she knew nothing.

She knew things.

She knew a lot of things.

She knew which distributors forgot to include SKUs every single week.

She knew which SAP reports required sacrificing ten minutes of her life to the loading gods.

She knew the exact time window when the warehouse started ignoring emails.

She knew how to fix broken Sales File formulas that had existed since the Bush administration.

She knew eighty percent of the products. Easily. Confidently.

But right now, she felt like an absolute failure.

Like she had cheated on a test she didn’t even know she was taking.

Like she had committed a crime but no one would tell her what the law actually was.

Her chest felt tight.

She leaned back slowly, staring at the ceiling tiles above her desk.

One of them had a faint water stain shaped vaguely like Florida.

She focused on Florida for a long moment.

Then she sighed, sat up, and opened her browser.

Shizz Company Product Catalog.

If memorization was the game, she would memorize.

She opened her flashcard document.

It had grown alarmingly large.

She added a new section.

YOLO – Your Oil Loves Oil – ??? – Verify category

She stared at the question marks for a moment, then opened three internal files, two archived training decks, and one product pricing sheet in an attempt to confirm something that probably existed in someone’s brain but nowhere else on earth.

Her Slack pinged.

Evelyn: you alive?

Risa stared at the message.

Risa: define alive

Three dots appeared immediately.

Sophia: bad 1:1?

Risa exhaled slowly.

Risa: got quizzed on products
Risa: failed YOLO apparently

A pause.

Then:

Sophia: lmao WHAT
Evelyn: THEYRE QUIZZING YOU???

Risa stared at the screen.

She didn’t reply right away.

Instead, she minimized Slack, opened her distributor inbox, and started answering emails.

Because orders still had to go out.

Because the BOL Tracker still needed updating.

Because the Sales File still had broken formulas blinking at her like needy Tamagotchis.

Because regardless of whether she could categorize YOLO correctly, the warehouse still closed at six.

Her fingers moved across the keyboard automatically, muscle memory carrying her through tasks her brain was too tired to emotionally participate in.

But somewhere in the back of her mind, a quiet thought kept tapping on the glass.

She had studied.

She had worked.

She had tried.

And somehow… it still wasn’t enough.

She finished sending a pro forma email, adjusted a pricing discrepancy, and watched SAP spin its eternal loading wheel.

Then she opened her flashcards again.

YOLO stared back at her.

She typed:

YOLO – Your Oil Loves Oil – Retail/Styling – Confirm with someone who will not emotionally destroy me

She saved the document.

Then she took another sip of her cold coffee, made a face, and kept working.

Because that, apparently, was also part of the job.