Working As Designed
The freeway on-ramp is a parking lot, brake lights pulsing on and off like one big heartbeat. The podcast playing from Alma’s phone is hosted by a calm, ASMR-style voice explaining the importance of waking up at 5 AM to visualize your goals and journal with quiet intentionality.
Alma was wrenched from sleep at 5:47 to the sound of whistles in the distance that turned out to be birds chirping once she calmed down enough to recognize it.
She visualizes making it to her desk before nine.
She visualizes not getting fired or laid off.
A granola bar is in the center console. Green wrapper this morning, from a box where the wrappers are supposed to tell you the flavor but they all taste the same. She bought them in bulk from Amazon and had them delivered to her parents’ house when the RTO order came down and she no longer had time to eat breakfast except in the car.
Her jaw aches.
She’s been clenching it every morning at the same spot thirty minutes in at the interchange that was put in three years ago but nobody seems to have adapted to yet. A different car cuts her off each morning to swerve across the solid white lines at the last minute to take the westbound exit. This morning it’s a luxury SUV with windows tinted dark that probably costs as much as Alma makes in an entire year.
The traffic inches forward. The podcast woman is talking about abundance mindset, how you have to clear space for prosperity before prosperity can find you.
The email from her loan servicer arrived three months ago, announcing the end of the payment pause and noting that her new payment would be $847 a month. The decision to move home was brutal, but between the car or the apartment, keeping the car meant that she could at least drive for DoorDash a few nights a week.
Or she could have. ICE hanging around McDonalds and Taco Bell looking for easy targets was too great a risk even though she was born here and carries both her passport and her driver’s license everywhere.
The traffic inches forward. Alma considers what to do about ticket 3847.
For four years, ticket 3847 has haunted her queue. Thirty-one different customers have reported the issue over those years, and each time, the ticket reappears. It’s an authentication bug that affects users behind certain firewall configurations, making the login spin endlessly and sometimes crash the user’s browser. The customers don’t know why authentication failed or how to fix it, so they call support and support reports the defect and the proprietary AI determines that the defect is the same as closed ticket 3847, then reopens the ticket with a note that Alma should consider escalating this repeat issue to the engineering team for a solution.
Alma wrote up the root cause for ticket 3847 in her first month on the job. Two days of engineering time, she estimated. Her manager said she had good instincts. The ticket went into a queue. The queue went into a backlog. Six months later, someone relabeled it from “Critical Bug” to “Environment-Specific Behavior” and added a note: Customer-side network configuration issue. Workaround documented. Resolution: Working as Designed.
The traffic finally breaks. Alma merges and accelerates with the flow. The podcast woman is talking about gratitude practices now, how you should end each commute by thanking the universe for safe passage.
Alma thanks the universe for not getting rear-ended and making it to the parking structure that costs $75 a month but at least has a space for her. She’s lucky to still need a $75 a month parking space. There are plenty of people the company laid off six months ago who’d be thanking the universe to still pay $75 a month for parking.
Alma thanks the universe for the job that requires her to pay $75 a month in parking and $150 a month in gas to sit at a desk and do all the same work that until recently she was allowed to do at home with an extra $225 in her bank account.
That’s what she tells herself, at least.
Alma scrolls LinkedIn posts in the parking structure so that she doesn’t badge in “too early” and confuse the system into paying her for extra time. The green OPEN TO WORK banners multiply every week. She’s connected with twelve people who were laid off in the last round of “right-sizing” six months ago whose green banners haven’t budged since.
RIF notices went out at a competitor yesterday. Alma saw the posts, first about the layoffs and then the wave of green with paragraphs talking about “bittersweet news” and “exploring new opportunities” and being “ready for the next adventure.”
Those are still better than the ones that include statistics for the number of months unemployed and job applications that number in the hundreds. Which are still better than the ones with GoFundMe and CashApp links and desperate pleas for assistance with rent and electricity and cancer treatment funding.
She finishes her mascara in the rearview mirror. Gathers her bag, her badge, her water bottle.
The walk to her desk takes seven minutes. She badges in at 8:58, within the acceptable 3-minute early arrival window. (Late arrivals are noted at precisely 9:01.) The office is open-plan, forty desks in a room with no walls, everyone visible to everyone else at all times. Her desk is in the middle, fluorescent light flattening everything, a clear sightline to glass-walled offices along the perimeter where managers used to sit before they all went remote and started showing up only for quarterly reviews.
She logs in at exactly 9:00, her Teams icon turning green alongside everyone else she’s ever chatted with. The ones still there, at least. (She should hide the graveyard of all-black circles without gray x’s, but she doesn’t.)
Her notifications are already chiming.
Hi Alma! Just following up on the Q2 defect log—wanted to make sure this is still on your radar! Let me know if you need anything from my end!! 😊
Four exclamation points and an emoji. That’s not good. She’s learned to read these the way she learned to read white girls’ body language when they invited her to anything in high school.
She types back: On it!! Will have it over shortly!!
Four exclamation points. Never escalate, never de-escalate, just mirror the energy.
A calendar notification appears at the bottom of her screen. 4:30 PM today. Fifteen minutes. The organizer is someone from HR she’s never spoken to. The subject line just says Check-in.
No agenda or note. No indication of what they want to check in about.
Alma stares at it. Four rounds of layoffs and LinkedIn have taught her what an unexpected HR meeting usually means. It ends with Today I learned that my role has been eliminated and After six wonderful years and I’m shocked and heartbroken to share…
The meeting is in seven hours. She has to sit here for seven hours not knowing.
At 9:57, Alma adjusts her headset. Checks her camera. The fluorescent light makes her look washed out, tired. She logs into the meeting at 9:59. The people sitting around her appear staring at her from a Zoom grid, a kaleidoscope of faces and desks that’s familiar and unsettling at the same time. The waiting room is playing music, something with a beat and a voice rapping over synth.
It takes Alma a second to realize it’s the song that Todd from Enablement made with that AI generator, the one he presented at last quarter’s all-hands while bragging about his prompting skills. We’re aligned, we’re on time / customer success, we’re in our prime / hitting targets, raising bars / Q3 numbers taking us to Mars.
Todd is fifty-three and wears tailored suits and has clearly never listened to rap in his life, but the C-suite has a tradition of daring each other to rap about their enthusiasm during sales kickoff meetings, and Todd has never been able to tell that the applause is not a measure of his skill.
The Chief Strategy Officer had told him the AI song was fire. Now it plays before every company meeting, Todd’s gift to corporate culture, his legacy.
The music cuts out.
“Good morning, everyone!” Meredith Callahan, VP of Customer Experience, beams from her rectangle. Her home office has built-in bookshelves, abstract art in calming colors, a mug that says INSPIRE in gold script. “I’m just so thrilled to be connecting with all of you today.”
The chat starts auto-scrolling with new messages faster than Alma cares to keep track of. The names display with surnames first.
Morrison, Adele: Good morning!!
Pemberton, James: Happy Tuesday team!
Anderson, Sarah: So glad to be here! ☀️☀️☀️
Alma types Good morning! One exclamation point. She sends it and reaches for her water bottle.
“Before we dive into our agenda, I want to take a moment to just breathe.” Meredith closes her eyes. On camera, in front of sixty-five people. “Let’s all just take a breath together. In through the nose… out through the mouth…”
Nobody moves. Or everyone moves, in other tabs, checking email and answering Teams messages while vaguely pretending to be focused on breathing.
Alma watches the seconds pass on her system clock. Todd’s song is stuck in her head now. We’re aligned, we’re on time.
She wonders if this is what hell sounds like.
“Okay.” Meredith opens her eyes. “I just want to acknowledge that we’re navigating a season of transition. And I know that can feel destabilizing. But I truly believe that this team has what it takes to not just weather the storm, but to lean into the discomfort and find the growth opportunity within it. So before we move forward, let’s set our intention: gratitude. Let’s make it our slide transition word of the day, Let’s all say ‘gratitude’ together. Or in the chat, if you’re on mute. Let’s remind ourselves that even challenge is a gift.”
Thompkins, Tara: So true!
Booker, David: Love the intention-setting!
Alma’s phone buzzes in her purse.
She can’t check it. Phones are supposed to be stored away during work hours. The watch pulses a second later. It came with the phone contract she signed up for during the pandemic, the first time she’d been able to afford anything more than the cheapest phone available. Smart watches weren’t mentioned at all in the company handbook or policy, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be held against her.
She glances down without moving her head, just her eyes.
Her cousin Lucia in the family chat: ojo. lincoln y main. cuidado.
Her stomach drops. Fifteen minutes away from her parents’ street. She keeps her eyes on the screen where Meredith is talking about the agenda, something about listening to the market speak and celebrating wins while staying hungry.
“—and I’m just so excited to have Kevin walk us through the data. Kevin has done some really incredible work here. Gratitude!”
The slide changes.
Cruz, Zachary: Grateful for good data! 🙏
Kevin from Analytics appears. The only thing Alma knows about Kevin from Analytics was that he shared in the cross-functional collaborative exploratory group that he was voted most likely to be an actuary by his high school math club. He had to explain to the rest of the group that analysts are not the same as actuaries.
Alma wonders what she’s forgotten in order to remember useless facts about people she works with.
“Thanks, Meredith. Really excited to share what we’re seeing here.”
He shares his screen. The slide is titled CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT: Q2 INSIGHTS. Subtitle: Transforming Feedback into Fuel.
“So. The data.” He clicks forward. “We’re seeing a seventeen percent decline in satisfaction scores quarter over quarter. Now—” he holds up a hand to preempt concern, but is mostly met with mild curiosity and distracted attempts to look attentive. “I know that sounds bad. But I actually think this is a really positive signal.”
Franklin, Jonas: Interesting! Tell us more!
Dryer, Laura: Love Kevin’s perspective – let’s make some lemonade from those lemons!
“Here’s why: customers who take the time to give us low scores are customers who are still engaged with the platform. They haven’t churned. They haven’t gone silent. They’re invested enough in the relationship to tell us they’re disappointed, and that’s actually a form of loyalty.”
Her watch vibrates twice in quick succession. The neighborhood chat this time, a number without a name attached, maybe the new family down the street. The message previews flash past: Whistles on 4th Street. Coming from the east.
“When we drill into the verbatims — that’s the actual language customers use, which we run through our customer sentiment analysis pipeline — we can see some really rich themes. Gratitude!”
The slide changes. A word cloud fills the screen. The biggest words are FRUSTRATED and WAITING and IMPOSSIBLE, floating in the center like accusations.
“Now, I know these don’t look great. But watch this.” Kevin circles WAITING with his cursor. “Customers who use the word ‘waiting’ have a twenty-eight percent higher lifetime value than customers who don’t. Why? Because they’re still here. They haven’t left the platform. They’re waiting for us. Because they have faith.”
Jackson, Anne-Marie: Wow! Such a powerful reframe! Faith!! 🙏
Her eyes flick to her watch to see a message. Mrs. Rockwell has lived across the street since before Alma’s family moved in. She’s had Alma’s number for years “for emergencies,” which used to mean her father’s blood pressure or her mother’s asthma.
Alma, they’re going door to door on… The character limit obscures whatever else follows. The words glow for two seconds and then the screen goes dark.
Alma cannot hear anything past the thunder of her own heartbeat in her ears.
“—and that brings me to our opportunity areas. When customers say they’re frustrated, what they’re really saying is I believe you can do better. It’s an invitation to create a stronger story about how we can meet their needs.”
Kurtis, Natalie: So true! Customer feedback is such a gift! 💝
“Alma?” Kevin’s voice cuts through the noise. “You’re our defect resolution expert. Does this resonate with what you’re seeing in the queue?”
She unmutes. The click feels like it happens somewhere far away from her hands.
“We’re seeing similar patterns.” Her voice sounds normal. She doesn’t know how her voice sounds normal. “Customers contacting us multiple times about the same issue. Longer time to resolution.”
“Would you say that’s a capacity issue or a process issue?”
The watch face is dark. She can’t check it again without moving her wrist, and if she moves her wrist, everyone will see her move her wrist. She cannot move her wrist.
“Probably both,” she says. “I can pull some data and follow up offline.”
“That would be amazing. Thanks, Alma.”
Dryer, Laura: Love the cross-functional perspective here – this is the good stuff!
Her watch pulses against her wrist. She keeps her eyes on the screen.
“Okay!” Meredith is back, hands clasped together beneath her chin like she’s about to share wonderful news. “I’m so energized by this discussion. Before we move into breakouts, I want to bring in Jordan to share some updates on where we’re headed as an organization. Jordan, take it away. Gratitude!”
Morrison, Adele: Gratitude! So excited for this!
Jordan Mercer appears in the main frame. Alma has seen her face in every town hall but never in real life. She looks the same on camera every time: blonde hair in a sleek bob that probably costs more to maintain than Alma’s car does.
“Thanks, Meredith. I’ll keep this brief because I know you all have breakouts to get to.” Jordan pauses. The pause is rehearsed; Alma has seen enough of these to know. “I want to start by saying how proud I am of this team. Our NRR is at 112 percent. Churn is down to 4.2. Expansion revenue up 34 percent quarter over quarter. Those numbers don’t happen by accident. They happen because every single person on this call shows up and delivers.”
Franklin, Jonas: Amazing results!! 🎉 This team 🙌
Jackson, Anne-Marie: So proud to be part of this – what a quarter!
Her wrist vibrates. She doesn’t look.
“Now. I’m not going to sugarcoat this.” Jordan speaks directly to the camera, like she’s personally addressing every person on the Zoom in their own workspace. “We’ve had to make some difficult decisions about our budgeting for the new fiscal year. Some of you may have heard—we’re doing a small restructure. A calibration, really. We’re optimizing our team composition to make sure we’re set up to deliver on our roadmap.”
The chat goes quiet.
“This only affects about eight percent of the organization. Those conversations are happening today, in parallel with this meeting. If you’re on this call, you’re not affected.” She smiles. The smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “But I know it can feel unsettling when teammates transition out. That’s natural. That’s human. I want you to know that everyone impacted is being treated with dignity and respect, and they’re receiving generous severance packages.”
Cruz, Zachary: Appreciate the transparency Jordan 🙏
Chen, Marcus: Clear direction. Thank you.
Eight percent. Alma tries not to do the math but she does the math anyway. Forty-eight. Forty-eight people getting a different meeting right now, a calendar invite with an HR rep that replaced their standup, and suddenly their whole life is different.
Her calendar has an HR meeting at 4:30.
Jordan said if you’re on this call, you’re not affected. But the meeting is still there, sitting on her calendar like a splinter in her brain.
“I know ‘restructure’ can feel like a scary word. But I want to reframe that for you.” Jordan leans forward slightly, the way people do when they’re about to say something they think is profound. “Every subscription is a relationship. Every month a customer renews, they’re choosing us. They’re voting with their wallets. And our job—our privilege—is to make sure we’re delivering so much value that they keep choosing us. That’s what this is about. Making sure every person on this team is positioned to maximize customer impact.”
Dryer, Laura: Love the customer-centric framing 💙
Her watch pulses twice. She keeps her hands flat on the desk.
“Please reach out to your managers or to HR with any questions. We’ll have an FAQ out by end of day. In the meantime,” Jordan’s smile returns. “Let’s stay focused on what we do best. Serving our customers. Making them successful. Because when they win, we win. That’s what we do here. Gratitude!”
“Thanks, Jordan.” Meredith is back, her energy somehow even brighter than before. “So inspiring to hear about how we’re investing in our future. Okay, breakout time! I want you to really lean into these conversations. Think about what you heard from Kevin—how can we turn friction into fuel? You have fifteen minutes. Rooms are opening now!”
The breakout room appears with a grid of five faces. Chen, Marcus sits with his camera perfectly centered, bookshelf behind him arranged by color. Okonkwo, Patricia from marketing has a desk that gets natural light through the conference room windows. Two others Alma recognizes from meetings. She hovers over their profile photos to find that Miller, David is a project manager and Finch, Tricia is an enablement analyst.
The prompt blinks at the top of the screen: How might we transform customer friction into fuel? Think BIG! 15 min!
Nobody speaks.
Chen, Marcus clears his throat. “So. Should we go around and share initial thoughts?” He pauses a fraction of a second and then continues, “I’ll start. I think the word cloud was really illuminating. Like, when Kevin pointed out that WAITING actually correlates with higher LTV—that’s the kind of insight we should be building on. Maybe there’s a way to make the waiting experience feel more intentional? More premium?”
Okonkwo, Patricia jumps in. “Oh, I love that. Like, what if waiting for support was actually a feature? Like a VIP queue where you get exclusive content while you wait?”
Her watch pulses. Alma can see the glow at the edge of her vision.
“Alma, you’re in defect resolution, right?” Miller, David is still clearly multitasking, unconcerned about being perceived as distracted in a space without management. His camera angle makes it look like he’s looking down at her. “What’s the biggest pain point you’re hearing from customers?”
“Communication.” She says the first word that pops into her head. It works, because no one ever bothers to fix root causes of recurring issues. She could fill the whole 10 minutes expanding on customer complaints that don’t get addressed, just marked as resolved or working as designed. They’re an evergreen feature of her job. “Customers feel left in the dark about what happens after they submit a help desk ticket. They escalate when they feel they’ve been waiting too long without resolution.”
“Interesting.” Chen, Marcus jumps in, then chooses to pause to take a sip of his coffee while making the rest of them wait to hear his thoughts. Alma’s wrist itches beneath her watch band, all the notifications she’s ignored piling up like pebble fragments in a shoe. “So maybe the solution isn’t faster resolution. Maybe it’s better communication about the resolution timeline.”
Miller, David nods, stroking his close-cropped beard. “Managing expectations. A process fix instead of a capacity fix. That’s scalable.”
“The issue is when there’s no resolution timeline,” Alma adds. “When the answer is actually that the issue isn’t going to be fixed. It’s working as designed.”
The breakout room goes quiet.
“Well,” Okonkwo, Patricia says after a moment, “maybe we need to think about how we communicate that. Like, ‘We hear you, and we’re prioritizing your feedback for future releases.’ That kind of thing.”
“But we’re not.” The words escape before Alma has time to bite her bottom lip to keep them inside. She should just nod and agree. It’s simpler. “Prioritizing their feedback. We’re choosing not to do anything with it.”
Her watch vibrates four times in a row, a millisecond of a pause, and then three more.
“I think the point is that we can’t solve everything, but we can make customers feel heard,” Miller, David is finally paying attention. “That’s the fuel, right? Channeling their frustration into feeling like they’re part of the process.”
“Totally,” Chen, Marcus replies. “It’s about narrative. The story we tell.”
Alma looks at the prompt blinking at the top of the screen. Think BIG!
“Sure,” she forces her voice as bland and noncommittal as possible. “The story.”
By the time the main room reconvenes, Alma has last count of the buzzes from her watch. She cannot think about what that means yet, though. Meredith asks for volunteers to share insights. Miller, Derek volunteers their group and jumps right into talking like he’d led the breakout group meeting the whole time. “We had a great discussion about reframing friction as opportunity,” he says. “Alma made a really insightful point about communication being the core pain point. We’re thinking about how we can make customers feel heard even when we can’t immediately solve their issue.”
Dryer, Laura: Love this – empathy at scale! So good.
Franklin, Jonas: Alma!! 🙌 So insightful!
“That’s beautiful,” Meredith says. “Empathy at scale. I love that.” She claps once. “Okay, before we wrap—I know some of you may be processing the news Jordan shared. Change is hard. But every ending is a beginning. Every door that closes—” she pauses, smiles “—opens a window.”
Jackson, Anne-Marie: So true. We have to keep looking at the positive possibilities! 💙
“So let’s end where we started. Gratitude.” Eyes closed again. “Whatever challenge you’re facing this afternoon, there’s a gift in it somewhere.” Pausing for a deep breath, she exhales for several seconds before opening her eyes and repeating, “Gratitude. See you all next week!”
Faces blink off. The meeting closes.
Her email chimes with a follow-up request for the defect log that actually includes the unreasonable phrase follow-up request in the subject line. Alma stares at it. Four exclamation points in the first email and a follow-up request less than 6 hours later.
She types back: Hi! Attached is the Q2 defect log with my analysis. Let me know if you have any questions!!!!
Four in a row looks manic. She moves one to after Hi, then hits send.
Her watch buzzing again is a bee sting. She can’t resist. Turning her wrist just slightly, she risks a glance down and catches the flash of another message preview. Mrs. Rockwell again, but the screen only says “image.”
“Hey, Alma.”
Patrick from Inside Sales has sat four feet away since the last team optimization. He runs the fantasy football league and aggressively corners people in the break room to talk about his YouTube channel on investing with ChatGPT. “Great stuff in the breakout. Empathy at scale. That’ll make a real impact.”
She bites her tongue until she tastes her own blood to keep her feelings off her face. “Thank you.”
He takes it as an invitation to continue and rolls his chair closer. “I was thinking about what you said, about customers feeling left in the dark. We hear that in sales calls all the time. They want to know someone’s listening, you know?”
The watch buzz has evolved to a wasp sting. “Right.” She doesn’t blink, deliberately glancing at her monitor. “Listening.”
He doesn’t take the hint. “Exactly. Like, the product does what it does, but the relationship is what keeps them renewing. Jordan was talking about that—every subscription is a relationship.” He leans in closer, but keeps enough distance to show he watched the sexual harassment training on 4x speed to get the gist of it. “You should put together a deck. Seriously. Take that insight to leadership.”
“I’ll think about it.”
Her polite smile feels like it’s about to crack open at the edges into a soundless scream.
“You’ve got a real instinct for this stuff. I’m always telling people, Alma’s the one who actually gets the customer perspective—”
“Patrick.” Her voice comes out flat. Too flat. She adjusts. “Sorry. But I have a deadline. The Q2 log.”
“Oh, right, totally.” He straightens up, palms raised with a smile that he probably thinks is charming. “I’ll let you get back to it. But seriously, think about the deck. I’d back you up.”
He moves his chair back away.
The Slack notification pings moments later. Patrick, in the Customer Experience channel: @Santos, Alma absolutely crushed it in the breakout today. Her point about customers feeling “left in the dark” is exactly the kind of insight we need to be elevating. Shoutout to the real ones 🙌
At 11:45, she walks to the bathroom. The stall is the only place unmonitored by cameras or colleagues. She sits on the closed lid and opens her phone.
The neighborhood watch chat is fifty-three messages she hasn’t read. She scrolls past them to tap Mrs. Rockwell’s thread and finds an image of the street between their houses, crowded with SUVs and men with guns so large they look like movie props. The message above it: Alma, they’re going door to door on Mariposa heading this way.
Alma cannot breathe for one endless moment.
She scrolls back to the neighborhood watch chat. Someone has posted a link to a video from a local Facebook group. Filmed through a window screen with curtains peeking in and out of the frame as the camera person’s hand shakes. The familiar shapes of the street she grew up on come into focus and she presses the side button to make sure it’s muted.
The video sears itself into her corneas. Men dressed for war with their guns raised. Tear gas raining down on neighbors crowding the sidewalks with their phones out. The men converge on one person at the edge of the frame: a yellow reflective work vest, dark hair, face pressed into the snow as the men in masks crowd on top of each other to beat him.
She pauses the video. The afterimage stays even when she closes her eyes against it. She digs the fingernails of her left hand into her palm until she can swallow the rage and fear and grief back down again. Then she returns to the video and watches it four more times, searching for a fraction of a second where the person’s face is visible. But all she can see is the agent wearing a black mask printed with white skeleton teeth, a warped version of a calavera, a demon wearing the form of a human.
She can’t remember what her father was wearing this morning.
The bathroom door opens with the clicking of heels that aren’t a mandatory part of the required dress code for women in the handbook but may as well be.
Alma’s hands have gone clammy and shaky around the phone.
Technically, she has PTO hours available. She could say family emergency. But she doesn’t know if it is one. If she leaves and it’s nothing, she’s made herself noticeable as someone who leaves in the middle of the day while the company is optimizing teams.
If she leaves and it’s something, the worst has already happened and she’s made herself noticeable.
If she doesn’t mark herself available in three minutes, the system will flag her for exceeding the paid break time without prior authorization.
She puts the phone in her bag. Flushes and washes her hands to keep up appearances and walks back to her desk with one minute to spare. Her screensaver has kicked in, a set of rotating images taken from various Town Hall slide decks. We lead with empathy next to photos of sales teams at their kickoff conference. People are our greatest asset next to a stock photo of a group of employees in a conference room. (Alma knows it’s a stock photo because the same one shows up on their primary competitor’s careers page next to the heading Join Our Mission to Help Kids Grow.)
She puts her phone in her desk drawer and closes it. The mouse is cold under her hand.
Ticket 3847. A new instance, same authentication bug. The customer’s login screen spins behind their company firewall. Their CSR has escalated with a note that the customer is a high-value account considering cancellation. Alma pulls up the configuration, runs the diagnostic she’s run thirty-one times before, documents the same root cause she documented four years ago, and routes it back to the CSR with the workaround that doesn’t work and a template note that says Engineering has been notified and this issue is being tracked for a future release.
The template note has said future release for four years. No one has ever asked which release.
An email arrives from the People & Culture team.
Subject: Honoring Dr. King’s Legacy: Standing Together in Challenging Times
Team,
As we approach the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, we want to take a moment to reflect on the values of compassion, community, and service that Dr. King embodied—values that are at the heart of who we are as an organization.
We also want to acknowledge that recent events in communities across the country have been deeply troubling for many. While this message is not intended to take a political position on any specific policy or action, we recognize that some members of our team may be personally affected by what is happening, and we want you to know: you are seen, you are valued, and you belong here.
Dr. King reminded us that “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?” In that spirit, we’re excited to announce our new Community Engagement initiative! This quarter, we’re partnering with local schools to assemble Teacher Appreciation Kits for educators in underserved districts.
Each kit includes a company-branded ceramic mug, an inspirational notebook, artisan chocolates from a local small business, and a handwritten note of encouragement from our team. Volunteers will help assemble kits during a two-hour session on Saturday, February 15th in Conference Room A (lunch provided!). Sign up through the link below. We’d love to see strong participation to start our year right!
Together, we build what’s next.
— The People & Culture Team
Alma closes the email and returns to her queue.
Meredith’s follow-up arrives a few minutes later, forwarded to the full Customer Experience distribution list:
Hi team! Making sure everyone sees this important message from People & Culture. I know this is a difficult time for many of us, and I want you to know that your managers and I are always available if you need to talk. Please also remember that our Employee Assistance Program is available 24/7 — you don’t have to go through anything alone. 💙
The volunteer opportunity looks wonderful and I’d love to see our team show up strong. Let’s honor Dr. King’s legacy together!
— Meredith
The Outlook reminder chimes and pops up in the middle of her screen. Check-in — Conference Room C — 5 minutes.
She picks up a notebook and walks to Conference Room C. The frosted glass door and floor to ceiling windows facing the interior hallway reveal a woman seated at one end of the 12-person table with a laptop open. When Alma steps inside, she sees the lanyard reads PEOPLE & CULTURE in the brand font and below it, smaller: PERFORMANCE OPERATIONS.
“Alma! Hi. I’m Dana. Please, sit anywhere you like.”
Alma sits in the first seat next to the door.
“We’re doing a routine timekeeping audit as part of the annual compliance cycle, and there was a six-minute variance on January 4th. You badged in at 8:54 but your first system login was at 9:00. Policy is a five-minute window between badge and login.” Dana angles the laptop toward her. A spreadsheet, badge-in times highlighted in yellow. Alma barely remembers logging in yesterday. The 4th may as well have been in college. Dana doesn’t miss a beat, continuing, “No action required on your end. Just remember that policy is no more than one variance per quarter without prior authorization.”
“Okay.”
“Great.” Dana closes the laptop. Smiles. “That’s it! Have a good afternoon.”
Alma walks back to her desk. The hallway is bright and long and her badge swings against her chest with each step. Her desk is where she left it. The drawer is closed. She can’t hear whether the phone inside it is still buzzing or if it’s gone quiet, and she doesn’t know which would be worse.
She sits. The screensaver is cycling. Innovation starts with listening. She moves the mouse and her inbox fills the screen, new messages stacked on top of each other in bold. Meredith’s email is still open in the preview pane with its volunteer link, blue and underlined at the bottom of the message.
Her hand is on the mouse. The link is right there. Eight percent of the company was eliminated today and a woman she’d never met just documented a conversation about six minutes. Alma’s name is in a yellow-highlighted spreadsheet on someone’s laptop.
She clicks the link.
The form loads. Name, department, manager, availability, dietary restrictions for the provided lunch. She fills in each field the way she fills in ticket fields, the way she types template notes, the way she mirrors exclamation points.
The last field is a text box with an asterisk. Required.
In a few words, tell us your “why”! What does community service mean to you?
The cursor blinks in the empty field.
The placeholder text sits in light gray italic: Ex: “I volunteer because giving back reminds me what really matters!”
Alma puts her hands on the keyboard.
Something is wrong with her breathing. It’s too shallow, catching high in her chest where it can’t reach anything, and she can feel her pulse in her fingertips against the keys. The fluorescent light is doing the thing it does, the frequency that drills behind her eyes, and the office is too loud and too bright and too full of people eating and typing and existing and she cannot…
She presses her tongue hard against the roof of her mouth and holds it there until her jaw aches, until her teeth ache, until the ache crowds out everything else. She breathes in through her nose. Counts to four. Lets it out slow enough that the person three feet away won’t hear anything except a woman sitting at her desk.
The text box waits.
She types: I believe in showing up for the communities that show up for us.
Twelve words. She reads them back. They sound like something. They sound like a person who means it. They could be a pull quote on a slide, a caption beneath her photo, a line in Meredith’s recap email. Alma from Defect Resolution put it beautifully…
She clicks submit.
END