Quentin Norris — Paul’s Last Day

Anna was already having a bad day before the email popped up in her inbox, so the subject just felt like a slap in the face. Since when was Paul leaving, and why was she the last to hear about it? Paul had been the first person at the company to talk to her when she started three years ago. He had only been working there for a few weeks before she was hired but he already seemed like he’d been there for ages. That was how easily Paul adapted to any situation. He was such a glowing ball of sunshine, and he was pretty as hell too. It was no wonder Anna immediately developed a crush on him. She wasn’t the only one. She’d overheard a few other girls from the design team browsing through his Instagram profile once, practically drooling over his pictures.

She knew she had to say something to him before he left, but for some reason, she found herself resenting the fact that he was leaving. It felt like a personal betrayal. What happened to the unspoken bond that she shared with everyone from the customer service team when she first started here? When she started,

there were ten of them. They were a ragtag team of weirdos and misfits. They were the ones that the rest of the company seemed to want to ignore, to pretend like they weren’t there. They weren’t programmers, product design, or social media experts. They just took phone calls from angry people who didn’t understand the terms and services of a subscription service app. It was never said out loud, but Anna had always thought there was an agreement between everyone in the customer service team to never join the ranks of all the normies that took their jobs too seriously, or that they’d stick together and never leave

while everyone suffered for their art and the day job paid the bills. Everyone in the service team had some grand plan outside of work. Carol was a comedian, Ray was in a band, Paul was an illustrator, and so on. Anna? She didn’t really have anything specific. She liked movies but had only ever written one screenplay that wasn’t very good.

One by one, they all disappeared. They either got better day jobs somewhere else or they moved up in the company ranks. Each betrayal to the original team stung just a little more than the next. Anna burned those bridges and stopped saying hello to people like Carol when they passed by her in the hallways. The only one she kept saying hello to was Paul after he joined the Design team. His departure hurt the most of all, but she desperately tried to cling to that bridge. All the same, they never talked as much as they used to anymore. That was just the way Anna’s brain worked. If she didn’t see anyone every day of her life, eventually she just forgot about them.

Anna was the only one left from the original team. A new batch of fresh faced kids cycled through every month or so, and Anna felt older and older with each new hire. It was hard not to feel like a loser every day she clocked in at this godforsaken job. She spent most of her workday fantasizing about a better life. She imagined what her own goodbye email would look like. She had no idea what she would do after she left, but she knew walking out the office doors for the last time would be the greatest feeling she would ever experience.

Anna walked past Paul’s desk on her lunch break. He was working on a header for a newsletter email and didn’t hear her when she walked up at first. She had to tap him on the shoulder. She felt like a stranger approaching a celebrity. His face took a moment to register her but a split second later, his face beamed with a giant smile.

“Hey Anna! How’s it going?” Did he even realize it was his last day? He was acting like he was coming back on Monday.

“Pretty okay, nothing new. I just wanted to say congrats on your last day.”

“Thanks! Hey, let’s stay in touch, alright?”

“Yeah, sure.” She really hoped that was true.

“And send me that screenplay sometime. I’d love to read it. Maybe I can draw something up for it. Might make a cool comic as well as a movie.”

“Definitely.” She knew this wasn’t true. “Well, have fun at your new job.”

“Thanks!” He gave her one last beautiful, talented smile that melted her insides before she returned to her desk. She fantasized about maybe running into him at a bar a few months down the road when hopefully neither of them worked in this hell hole anymore. Maybe they’d flirt for a bit before finding a secluded corner and then he’d finally kiss her. Her face got hot and she shook the thought out of her head. She felt embarrassed, even though none of her co-workers knew what she was thinking. She put her headphones on and went back to work.