“Hey, Ava,” Ethan said with that fake-friendly grin as he spun around in my chair, “I heard you got moved to Customer Care. Honestly, that’s not bad. It’s easier down there, and I think it’s closer to your place too.”

I bent down, picked up my plant, and didn’t bother answering him.

Around us, the rest of the team suddenly became very interested in their screens. Keyboards started clacking louder than necessary, the corporate version of pretending nothing ugly was happening in plain sight.

I pulled open the drawer of my desk.

The folders were still there.

But everything related to the Crestline project was gone.

“Where are the Crestline files?” I asked.

Ethan held up a flash drive and waved it once.

“Miranda said the project’s officially been handed off,” he said. “So I’m keeping the materials now.”

I stared at the drive.

Inside it were 117 slides of presentation work, 43 client meeting summaries, and 9 separate revisions of the requirements document.

Every word had been typed by me.

He probably didn’t even understand my file naming system.

Five years.

That was how long I had been in that department.

As I sat down on the floor and started packing the cardboard box, I silently counted what was left of those years.

One employee badge.

Three notebooks.

One chipped white ceramic mug.

The mug had Outstanding Employee printed on it in silver.

It had been handed out at the company holiday party the year before last. Miranda went up on stage to accept the team award and gave a speech about “shared success.”

She never said my name once.

I put the mug at the bottom of the box and laid my coat over it.

Moving out took less than five minutes.

Apparently, five years of effort fit easily into one cardboard box.

The elevator ride from the twelfth floor down to the third took less than a minute.

When the doors opened, there was an ordinary sheet of printer paper taped crookedly to the wall across from me.

Customer Care Operations

One corner of the sign had already started curling up.

Two of the hallway lights were out. The floor tiles were darker than the ones upstairs, and the whole place looked like a forgotten wing of the building no one wanted to spend money fixing.

I stood there for a second, box in my arms, staring at the door.

Then I pushed it open.

The department was even smaller than I expected.

Six desks packed tightly together.

Only three people sitting there.

A gray-haired man stood up from the far corner and smiled at me. He was Mr. Collins from Customer Care.

“You must be Ava,” he said warmly. “Welcome, welcome. Come on in.”

He led me to a desk near the window. The surface had been wiped down carefully, but one corner still had a dusty tape mark on it, like something had been stuck there for years.

“We don’t have many people,” he said, smiling. “Take your time getting used to things.”

Then he added, with a little laugh, “This department may be tiny, but at least nobody works late.”

The young woman at the next desk raised a hand at me.

“I’m Mia,” she said. “You can call me Mia.”

Her monitor was filled with customer complaint tickets, rows and rows of them, all flagged in red.

I set down my box and turned on the computer.

My system access hadn’t been transferred yet.

I typed my password three times.

Each time, the same message appeared:

Insufficient permissions.

I sent a request to IT.

A few minutes later they replied that my access to Strategic Product had already been revoked, and my Customer Care permissions were still pending manager approval.

Mr. Collins tried to help and went to approve it himself, but when he came back, he shook his head.

“It’s stuck with HR,” he said. “Could be two or three days.”

So I sat there at an empty desk, locked out of every system, unable to do anything.

My phone buzzed.

A message from Miranda.

Where did you save the customer preference analysis for Crestline? Ethan can’t find it, and we need it urgently.

I stared at the screen for five seconds.

Then I put my phone face down and didn’t answer.

02

The next day, Ethan sent a message in the big Strategic Product team chat:

Hi everyone, moving forward I’ll be taking full ownership of the Crestline project. If you need anything related to it, please come directly to me, no need to reach out to Ava anymore. Thanks to Ava for all the foundational work in the early phase. Really appreciate it.

Foundational work.

That was what he called it.

117 slides. 43 meeting summaries. Months of client strategy.

Foundational work.

Then the replies started popping up.

Thanks for everything, Ava.
Good luck!
You’ve got this, Ethan.
Glad the project’s in good hands now.

Not one person tagged me directly.

Not one.

I left the group chat.

My Customer Care system permissions finally came through on the third day.

When I logged in, the home screen filled instantly with pending support tickets.

472 open items.

The oldest one was from three months ago.

“No one has handled these?” I asked.

Mia gave a tired little laugh.

“There are three of us,” she said. “Well, now four with you. Mr. Collins handles admin and random internal stuff, and Josh transferred out last month. It’s basically just been me on the phones.”

She pointed toward the far wall, where seven or eight unopened archive boxes were stacked on top of each other.

“Those are paper complaints from last year,” she said. “We haven’t even had enough people to enter them into the system.”

I opened the top box.

Most of the complaint forms were handwritten. The handwriting varied, but the issues repeated over and over.

System dashboard takes forever to load
Data sync is delayed
Export feature keeps failing

Every complaint pointed back to the same product module:

the analytics system that had been rolled out after the Crestline launch.

I pulled out twelve forms and arranged them by date on my desk.

The earliest one was from five months ago.

The Crestline analytics module had been live for six months.

Which meant the problems had started barely a month after launch.

“Does leadership know about these?” I asked.

Mia shrugged.

“I reported it. Twice. I wrote up reports and sent them to Product, no one responded. Then I escalated it to Miranda. She said customers didn’t understand the technology and we should just teach them how to use it better.”

She opened her email and turned the screen slightly so I could see.

Miranda’s response was still there.

Minor issues don’t need to be dramatized. Customers need guidance, not indulgence.

Sent three months earlier.

I photographed all twelve complaint forms and uploaded them to my cloud storage.

At lunch, I took my tray to the cafeteria and was looking for a place to sit when I ran into Lucas Reed from my old department.

The second he saw me, his steps faltered.

“Ava… I, uh…”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m on three now.”

He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something else.

Then he thought better of it and walked to a different table.

At 1:00 p.m., my phone buzzed again.

Another message from Miranda.

Ava, Daniel Mercer is asking about the change request details from Crestline’s last revision. Ethan just took over and isn’t clear on that part yet. Send me a clean summary before end of day.

Ethan just took over.

So he didn’t know.

So now the person they pushed out was suddenly useful again.

I replied with exactly two words:

Not available.

Three seconds later, Miranda called.

I declined it.

She called again.

I declined that too.

The third call came from Ethan.

I powered my phone off completely.

Mia watched me do it but didn’t say anything.

After a while, she opened her desk drawer and held out two chocolate bars.

“You want one?” she asked. “They’re not fancy. Just grabbed them at the gas station.”

It was cheap crispy chocolate.

Probably a dollar and change.

I unwrapped one and took a bite.

It was incredibly sweet.

The only sweet thing I had tasted all week.