For an entire week, I was convinced I was about to lose my job.
It started with little things.
My name appeared on a folder in accounting.
Then lawyers began calling my seventy-eight-year-old boss, Richard, almost every day.
Meetings were suddenly being held behind closed doors.
And whenever I walked into certain rooms, conversations seemed to stop
At first, I told myself I was imagining it.
By Wednesday, I no longer believed that.
Something was happening.
And somehow, I was involved.
I had worked at the company for years.
Long enough to know when the atmosphere felt different.
Long enough to recognize the uncomfortable silence people use when they know something they aren’t supposed to tell you.
Every time Richard walked past my desk, I wondered if that was the moment he would finally call me into his office.
He didn’t.
That somehow made it worse.
Then, on Thursday afternoon, he stopped beside me.
“Can you meet me tomorrow?”
My stomach dropped.
“Of course.”
“Not here.”
That was when I became certain.
I was being fired.
Why else would he want to meet away from the office?
I barely slept that night.
By Friday morning, I had already imagined the entire humiliation.
I pictured myself packing years of work into a cardboard box.
Family photographs.
A coffee mug.
A few notebooks.
The small plant on my desk that somehow survived despite my constantly forgetting to water it.
I imagined turning in my keys.
Shaking hands with people who suddenly didn’t know what to say to me.
