“I don’t want to get promoted.” 

My boss gives me a baffled look through her tight narrow slits for eyes. She turns her head a little on its side, and I see her hands move to the pockets of her peacoat. I’m pretty sure she thinks she looks like she’s wearing a cool trenchcoat. And she’s arranged this clandestine meeting in the dark parking garage of our office building as if we’re trading important secrets or some shit.

I glance around. It feels so weird to be here again after so long (about a year). I remember arriving so many regular mornings and making a beeline to my desk where I’d chat for the first half of the day with this loud duck-faced dude about how slutty we imagine all the hottest ladies there to be.

“X,” she begins, and might as well be using cue cards, “I would keep you on my team forever if I could. But too many have noticed your abilities.”

Am I supposed to feel good about that? Honored or some fuck?

“But you can’t make someone leave a county job,” I protest. “I’m way past probation. My annual reviews have all been good. And I don’t want to apply for . . . what was it again?”

“Department of Health and Human Services,” she responds slowly, clearly trying to show she feels my pain. “You’ll be in charge of your own unit, four or five employees, on the suicide prevention team.

“Suicide prevention?” I gulp, and a hundred really creative ways to off myself swim feverishly through my fervent mind competing for my attention. But the winner of that contest is always gonna be splatting down on pavement after leaping from way up high. Always.

“Yes, you’ll be in charge of a group that serves the public in, perhaps, the most important and direct manner possible.”

Why’s she talking like a fucking thesaurus? I’ve known the lady for years, and it’s like she can’t ever just engage in an honest back-and-forth. Always makes it sound like she’s got cassettes in her throat that just play portions of manuals whenever she opens her mouth.

“But . . . I love my job.”

Na, I don’t love my job. I don’t love sitting in a blank white room, day in and day out, staring at whichever is the right number of screens. I don’t love living with nothing but time to spend stewing in my own dissatisfaction. Yeah, even looking around again now, I kinda miss holding up in my unspecial cubicle marveling at the way a thousand asses can be uniquely enhanced by neat, pressed slacks, and shooting the shit about it all with my duck-faced neighbor (no, I can’t remember the dude’s fucking name).

But fucked if I want to leave my boring room and go somewhere new, to some new department, where I’ll have to meet new people and learn new things. Shit, I have no desire to be in charge of anyone. Not even really myself, though having to leave home will certainly put a damper on my list of things to try as well as/instead of fucking nofap.

“I know you love your job,” she says. “We simply cannot keep you.”

“And this new thing . . . managing a suicide prevention unit . . . I’m guessing there’s no telework option for that, huh?” Of course not.

“No,” she confirms. “You’ll be in an office . . . well, more like a center or station. You’ll actually have your own office there.” She pauses. “Oh, and there is one more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“I should have mentioned this first. Your team works nights. So that will be an adjustment. You’ll get used to it, though. I actually had to work graveyard, myself, back after college, when I…” 

She continues to talk, but I’ve already checked out. Sure, I pick up necessary details, like when she tells me I’ve still got a month or so before my transfer, and I’ll be hearing from the lead of my new team soon. But everything else is a blurry fog I can’t be fucked navigating.

Who decides this shit? Why me? I’ve never shown any damn management abilities . . . quite the opposite as far as I’m concerned. And now not only do I have to leave my shitty sanctuary to go out and brave this damn COVID apocalypse, but I’ve gotta do it in the middle of the fucking night, to go take calls from sad assholes even worse off than my dumbass?! 

I do stop myself before my useless inner woe-is-me banter crosses the threshold of questioning who the fuck even calls suicide prevention lines. I mean, yeah, I’m terrible, but not like that. Hell, yesterday I was feeling almost like a model citizen in my own way, eyeing my nieces' asses so much less while gaming. Now I’m back to seeing myself as a lump of shit powerless to change the flow of life’s big toilet sucking me down and breaking me apart. But still, it’s not like I can’t relate to those sad anonymous individuals out there fixing to end it all like I was just weeks ago. I mean, I get it, obviously.

Maybe I get it now more than ever. Just when you think things could sort of be ok . . . when you’ve faced off against and beaten the Jeeters of the world, and seen yourself do some fairly admirable shit (at least for you) . . . the world goes, Nope! Haha, you thought you were gonna quit fapping, start working out, save some cash, and go partake in orgies with your high school friend? Well, take this instead…

It’s enough to make me want to bypass calling any kind of prevention line, and skip straight to the end, as if I’m determined to win the death race against whomever I’m supposed to be in charge of helping save.

Looking back at my boss’s round face and dark, invisible eyes, I realize how much I’m gonna miss her. She’s been fucking cool to me for years. Comparatively, this whole teleworking thing has been a dream. I guess you don’t know what you’ve got until it's gone.

I won’t tell you my boss’s name. It doesn’t matter anymore. Either way, whether I live on and get promoted, or regress and win the big bye-bye race, I probably won’t see her again. I’ll never park here and walk over to that place I used to spend all day surrounded by such beauty I took for granted.