Obsession

Ping Ping A loud noise came from downstairs; the laptop left on from the previous day. She heard the ping downstairs. "Fuck, it's time for work,” she said to herself. She placed her feet on the floor and sat right up. She grabbed a previous shirt she wore the other day and walked over to her empty bathroom to get her tooth brush. She grabbed her tooth brush and her toothpaste, which were next to the ten medications she took daily.

She went downstairs, grabbed her dog, and walked her out to the back so she could use the restroom. The dog was old and had a hard time walking, but still had life in it—maybe another year of life. She closed the back door and walked towards her desk, her computer lit with more emails and chats about an issue at work. She murmured to herself, “Oh, great, always something.”.

She opened up her chat with her team and began typing. She began to type her message to her team: “Good morning, and let's start the day with positive vibes." She waited at her desk for a response, but the chat seemed to be quiet. After a few minutes went by, she pinged her coworker in a separate chat, “Is everyone on my team blind?”. Her eye began to twitch, and her blood pressure began to rise. There was still no response in that team chat from her team. She began to type again in her team chat, but she stopped herself.

She rose from her chair and made her way to the coffee machine; maybe that would give her time to cool off. She grabbed her coffee from her shelf above the counter and shoved it into the coffee maker. As she grabbed her coffee cup from the dish washer, she began to think, “My team needs to learn a lesson for not responding." She placed her cup into the coffee maker, stood there, and waited for her coffee to pour down into her cup. She grabbed her cup anxiously. Once the coffee had been poured into her cup, she rushed to her desk and began typing.

Work began to pile up in her inbox, but she seemed unbothered by the 100 emails she hadn’t opened. She began opening up her team's work that had already been submitted and approved. She sat there and stared at the screen with her mouse on the delete button. This work had takin weeks to get down, and her team had worked tiredly behind the scenes to get these documents completed on time. She said to herself, “This will teach them to write back to my messages." She moved her finger on the mouse and clicked delete.

She sat back and watched the screen, waiting for the response of her team to notice the issue. She began to scratch her arm nervously, and the interception started to grow more and more. It was like she was obsessed with the thought of chaos and her team needing to tend to her every message. Suddenly a loud ping came over her laptop. She dragged her mouse over to the message in her chat.

She clicked on her team chat, and suddenly more messages started to flood through. A sudden grin came over her face. She read a message from one of her teammates. The message was, “Did someone delete our file?”. Another message replied, “This is the fifth time this has happened!" A sudden phone call came from her chat room; she didn't know whether to answer or to let it go to voicemail. She sat there, staring at the screen with no emotion.

She wrote in the chat, “Sorry at the doctor's office; text me if you need me." She put her status aside and got up to walk to the kitchen. She began to think out loud to herself, “I didn't like the fact that my team called me like that suddenly." She walked over to her cup of coffee she had brewed earlier and paced back in fourth in her kitchen. She started to speak out loud to herself and say, “They think it's me; how dare they accuse me without evidence?" She pulled out her phone and started to open up her app for work. She began writing to her other teammate, who was another boss on another team. She wrote, “You won't believe this; my team thinks I deleted that file earlier today.”.

She got a phone call from her phone, and it was her team again. She clicked on the answer. It was her whole team, but with another person in the meeting. A face suddenly appeared on screen, and it was her boss. Her concern had grown, and now it seems that her team has reached out about the incident. She kept her screen off but her microphone on in her meeting; she didn't want them to see her look so vulnerable. Her boss replied, “Hello, do you know what happened with that file issue we had this morning?”. She stayed quiet for a second and replied, "No." Her boss stared at the screen and said, “Everyone can leave this meeting except Lisa.”.

Her boss stared at the screen with a more direct tone and said, "Lisa, we have monitored your behavior in the last month and noticed an unsettling pattern." Lisa stayed quiet but kept her mic on. It has seemed Lisa's behavior has caught up to her in the last few months: “We have decided to move on with another candidate and want your resignation by the end of the day.”.

Lisa stood up and pressed the button to show her face in her meeting with her boss. Her face looked annoyed and irritated. Her mic still on, she replied, “How dare you think it was me that did that?" Her boss stayed straight-faced and replied, “I need your registration by the end of the day,” and hung up the call.

Lisa threw her phone on the floor and walked to the door to get some fresh air. Her neighbor was outside, watering his grass and dancing to the music he had playing on his phone. Lisa opened up her door and walked towards the front. She noticed her neighbor and said, “Good morning, friend!”. As she kept walking, she noticed her neighbor never replied back to her. She then stood there, staring at him, and murmured to herself, “Is he ignoring me because he's better than me?”.