Chapter 13

Risa did what any emotionally stable, professional adult would do after being verbally body-slammed by her manager over skincare trivia.

She went to lunch with Evelyn and Sophia and trauma-dumped between bites of overpriced salad.

The three of them sat at their usual spot—a small café two blocks from the office that specialized in grain bowls, artisanal beverages, and employees quietly reconsidering their life choices.

“So,” Sophia said, stirring her iced coffee like she was preparing to receive tea, “tell us everything.”

Risa exhaled dramatically and leaned back in her chair.

“She quizzed me,” she said flatly.

Sophia blinked. “Like… actually quizzed you?”

“Like school,” Risa confirmed. “Pop quiz energy. Unexpected test. No study guide. Emotional consequences.”

Evelyn frowned. “On what?”

“Products.”

Sophia stared at her. “You’re kidding.”

“I wish I were kidding,” Risa said. “She asked me what YOLO stood for.”

“YOLO?” Sophia repeated. “Like… the company YOLO?”

“No,” Risa said. “The product.”

There was a pause.

Then Sophia slowly leaned back in her chair, processing.

“Okay,” she said carefully. “That’s already insane.”

“I answered the acronym correctly,” Risa continued, stabbing her salad with slightly more aggression than necessary. “But then she asked what category it falls under.”

“And?” Evelyn asked.

“And my brain left my body,” Risa said. “I guessed styling. It was wrong. I don’t even know if it was wrong. It felt wrong.”

Sophia snorted. “And then?”

“And then she asked why I didn’t memorize the entire product catalog by this week.”

Evelyn and Sophia exchanged a look that contained approximately three years of shared corporate trauma.

“I told her I studied,” Risa continued. “Because I DID. I know like… eighty percent of the catalog confidently.”

“That’s a lot,” Evelyn said immediately.

“Right??” Risa said, grateful someone had validated her existence.

“But apparently,” Risa continued, lowering her voice dramatically, “eighty percent is now legally considered a felony.”

Sophia shook her head. “That’s wild. I’ve been here over three years and no one has ever quizzed me on products like that.”

“Same,” Evelyn said. “I learned most of it just from repetition.”

Sophia took a long sip of her drink, eyes narrowing slightly.

“Honestly?” she said. “It kind of feels like Rachel’s on a power trip.”

Risa didn’t respond immediately, mostly because she agreed so violently she worried it might be visible from space.

Evelyn tilted her head thoughtfully.

“Can I say something?” she asked.

“Please,” Risa said.

“Isn’t improvement important too?” Evelyn said gently. “Like… let’s say you knew fifty percent last week. Now you know eighty. That’s still growth, right? Maybe it’s not perfect, but you’re improving.”

Risa stared at her.

The words landed somewhere deep and uncomfortable—like someone had gently placed a blanket over her while she was still emotionally spiraling.

“…Yeah,” she said quietly.

Because that made sense.

That felt fair.

That felt… human.

She picked at her salad for a moment before muttering, “Apparently improvement isn’t enough for my manager.”

Sophia made a face. “It should be.”

“Or maybe it is,” Risa added quickly, shrugging. “I don’t know. She just… didn’t seem satisfied.”

None of them spoke for a moment.

Then Sophia raised her glass slightly.

“To knowing eighty percent and still being alive,” she said.

They clinked drinks solemnly.

***

Work that week moved in a way that was both painfully slow and emotionally exhausting.

Analytics was quiet. Suspiciously quiet. The transcoding apocalypse had passed, leaving behind a barren wasteland of completed uploads and empty dashboards.

Which meant Risa was left alone with her oldest, most loyal enemy.

The Sales File.

By Thursday afternoon, she had been staring at interconnected spreadsheets for so long that the numbers had begun developing personalities.

Sheet 12 was passive-aggressive.

Sheet 19 was chaotic evil.

Sheet 27 simply refused to acknowledge modern formula conventions.

At 3:30 p.m., while she was deep in the sacred ritual of reconciling distributor numbers, Brad suddenly turned his chair slightly toward her.

“Hey Risa,” he said casually. “Have you updated the numbers for the Promo Summary yet?”

Her brain stopped.

Not slowed.

Stopped.

Like someone had unplugged it mid-thought.

“…Huh?” escaped her mouth before she could stop it.

Inside her head, a completely different conversation was happening.

How does the Promo Summary numbers update?
Wait, is he asking if I updated the file or asking HOW it updates?
Did something break?
Did Marketing say something?
Is this a trick question?
Is this another quiz??

Then, like a computer restarting after a forced update, comprehension returned.

“Oh!” she said quickly. “Yes, I updated it on Tuesday.”

Brad frowned slightly.

Not aggressively.

Not even noticeably.

Just… slightly.

Risa felt it like a seismic event anyway.

“Oh,” he said.

There was a small pause. Then Brad nodded once and turned back to his screen.

Nothing else was said.

Risa stared at her monitor, her heart doing a weird anxious stutter.

What did I do wrong?

She replayed the conversation mentally.

Have you updated the numbers for the Promo Summary yet?

Yes, Tuesday.

That was correct.

That was always when she updated it. Every week. Like clockwork. Before Marketing even touched it.

She waited for follow-up criticism.

None came.

Brad continued working.

Risa slowly turned back to her Sales File, her brain buzzing with the uncomfortable sensation of having missed a social cue in a conversation she didn’t even understand.

---

Friday morning arrived with the gentle emotional energy of impending doom.

Risa knew this because her phone rang at 10:07 a.m.

Rachel.

Of course.

Risa inhaled, exhaled, and answered.

“Hi Rachel!”

“Hi Risa,” Rachel said. “Brad told me about yesterday.”

Risa blinked.

“…About what?” she almost asked out loud.

Her brain scrambled through Thursday like flipping through a photo album of spreadsheets and mild confusion.

“There wasn’t anything worth discussing,” she thought wildly.

Instead, she said, “Oh?”

“You seem to have forgotten about updating the Promo Summary report,” Rachel continued, her tone holding that familiar, vaguely accusatory sharpness.

For a brief, dangerous second, something inside Risa snapped.

Not loudly.

Not dramatically.

Just… a quiet, exhausted crack.

She wanted to say:

There are six different teams demanding my attention every minute of the day.
I have two bosses who call me randomly like emotional jump scares.
I have twenty to thirty active tasks at any given moment.
SAP alone consumes approximately fifteen percent of my natural lifespan.

And also—

“I didn’t forget.”

Instead, she said, perfectly professional, “I didn’t forget. I update the Promo Summary every Tuesday—usually end of day, or first thing Wednesday morning depending on when Marketing needs it.”

There was a pause.

Rachel spoke again immediately, her voice carrying forward like a train that had already left the station.

“So how do you plan on not letting things slip through the cracks?”

Risa stared at her screen.

Her brain short-circuited in real time.

What… slipped… through… the cracks?

She had just explained.

She had explained clearly.

She wondered briefly if Rachel was deaf. Or perhaps simply existed in a different linguistic reality where sentences did not connect to previous sentences.

For a split second, Risa imagined cracking her laptop screen like it was a glow stick of suppressed rage.

Instead, she smiled.

“I want to make sure I understand,” she said carefully. “Since I’ve been updating it weekly already, are there additional steps you’d recommend to ensure consistency?”

Rachel nodded, pleased.

“Yes,” she said. “You could set recurring calendar reminders. Or maintain a detailed task list. Systems like that help prevent things from being forgotten.”

Risa nodded enthusiastically, like she had just been gifted the wisdom of the ages.

“That’s a great idea,” she said. “I’ll set a recurring calendar reminder for Tuesdays at 4:30 p.m.”

“Perfect,” Rachel said.

They both nodded, as if they had just collaboratively solved a crisis that had never existed.

“Just make sure things don’t fall through the cracks,” Rachel added, delivering one final reminder like a ceremonial closing statement.

“Of course,” Risa said.

The call ended.

Risa lowered her headset slowly.

She stared at her desktop background—a peaceful stock photo of mountains she had selected during onboarding, back when she still believed work-life balance might exist as a physical location.

She opened her calendar.

She created the reminder.

Promo Summary Update – Every Tuesday – 4:30 PM

She stared at the notification settings for a moment, then added two alerts.

One for thirty minutes before.

One for ten minutes before.

Just in case her brain decided to stop working again. Or, more realistically, just in case reality itself became optional.

She clicked save.

Then she leaned back in her chair and pressed her palms into her eyes.

Nothing was going right.

Not catastrophically wrong.

Just… wrong enough to make her feel like she was constantly one step behind expectations she couldn’t see.

She was working.

Hard.

Every day felt like sprinting on that same treadmill she’d imagined months ago—the one where running fast only meant staying in place.

Her inbox pinged again.

Another distributor email.

She dropped her hands, straightened in her chair, and opened it.

Because the warehouse still closed at six.

Because the Sales File still needed numbers.

Because the Promo Summary reminder would now exist forever, haunting her calendar like a tiny digital monument to conversations that made no sense.

She began typing her response, her fingers moving automatically.

And somewhere in the back of her mind, a quiet question lingered, stubborn and unwelcome.

If she was doing everything right…

Why did it always feel like she was doing everything wrong?