Employee of the Month

The trouble started, as these things often do, with a form.

Form 32B-AF: Resource Allocation Report. Just typing the name makes me taste bile. It required names, tasks, signatures, and something called accountability, which was rich considering the company I worked for—Briggswell Solutions.

No one knew what we “solved.” I liked to think of us as a car with no steering wheel: it wasn’t going anywhere fast, but everyone was too busy turning knobs and pulling levers to notice.

Still, I believed in the work. Somewhere, buried beneath our layers of incompetence and bureaucracy, the company had a good heart. We were supposed to be helping small businesses streamline their systems. Problem was, the only system here was passing blame downhill.

So, when my manager—Marcus, King of the Inept—dumped Form 32B-AF on my desk and demanded I identify the “Task Owner” for an overdue project, I did what any sane person in a panic would do: I lied.

I wrote down Jansen.