Flagged
Yeah, so JX_DTWN posted again.
Third time today. It’s only 2 PM.
I’m sitting here at Gyzeig Development—which nobody can pronounce and sounds like a German car part—in a cube farm that stretches to the horizon like a beige ocean of despair, under fluorescent lights that buzz like dying insects, staring at another Nextdoor notification from this guy who calls himself “Storytelling Yo!” Like he’s some kind of literary pirate.
“Mike,” I say. “This has got to be spam.”
Mike looks up from his screen where he’s definitely not working on our project to connect every Subway in America to thirty-six different servers just so the money can take a scenic tour through fifteen bank accounts. The motivational poster above his monitor says “TEAMWORK” and shows a bunch of rowing crew members who probably make more in endorsements than we do debugging point-of-sale disasters. Because apparently direct deposit is for suckers.
“Why?” Mike unwraps what has to be his fourth granola bar today. The wrapper crinkles like someone stepping on aluminum foil.
“Look at this.” I click through JX_DTWN’s posts. “God, relationships, corporate greed, inspirational fiction… It’s like someone fed a self-help book into a blender with a sociology textbook.”
“So?”
“So nobody’s that optimistic. Not really.”
There it is. The thing that pisses me off about JX_DTWN. This guy actually believes sharing stories on a neighborhood app might matter. That words can change things. That hope isn’t just a marketing strategy.
Mike cleans his glasses. Slowly. Like he’s buying time to call me an idiot without actually saying it.
“Send me the link.”
I copy-paste it over. Mike clicks through while I wonder when I became the kind of person who gets annoyed by other people’s enthusiasm. Probably around the same time I started getting paid sixty grand a year to build digital Rube Goldberg machines.
“I don’t see spam,” Mike says. “Just some guy sharing stories.”
“But I don’t like it.”
“That’s not—”
“If I think it’s spam, it’s spam. That’s how democracy works. Majority of one.”
Mike gives me a look. The kind you give someone who just suggested solving global warming by opening all the refrigerators.
“You could get banned for false reporting. And our employment contracts—”
I’m not listening. My cursor hovers over the Report button. I’m thinking about how good it would feel to break something that works. Just to prove I still can.
Click.
The sound is tiny. Final. Like stepping on a bug.
My hand stays frozen on the mouse. The screen refreshes. “Thank you for your report,” it says in cheerful blue text.
Around us, ten keyboards stop clicking for exactly three seconds in our gray fabric maze of productivity theater. Just long enough for the cubicle drones to register that something happened. Not long enough to care.
“Did you just…” Mike starts.
“Yep.”
“Jesus. Why?”
I could explain how JX_DTWN’s optimism makes me feel dead inside. How his faith in human connection reminds me I’ve forgotten how to believe in anything except my direct deposit. How his hope makes my cynicism feel like a choice instead of survival.
“Let’s get lunch.”
Bombay Palace smells like cumin and industrial disinfectant. We sit at a plastic table that wobbles, eating curry that tastes like it was made by someone who learned about spices from the back of a Lean Cuisine box.
“So you reported an innocent guy because his posts annoyed you,” Mike says.
“Pretty much.”
“That’s sociopathic.”
“Yeah, but consistently sociopathic.”
Mike shakes his head. Takes another bite of tandoori chicken that’s the color of a traffic cone.
Thing is, I know JX_DTWN probably won’t get banned. The internet’s surprisingly resilient when it comes to individual acts of pettiness. But for thirty seconds, I felt like I had control.
Which is the most pathetic part of this whole thing.
But hey. At least the naan bread’s edible. Even if it tastes like cardboard soaked in garlic butter.
What’s the pettiest thing you’ve ever done at work? I’m collecting workplace revenge stories – turns out we’re all more vindictive than we’d like to admit.
Leave your stories in the comments below – the more embarrassingly petty, the better!
Tags: workplace humor, office life, social media, petty revenge, corporate culture, short fiction
Categories: Short Stories, Workplace Comedy
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