Back to the Grind

Lin's finger hovered over the mouse, trembling slightly. He couldn't bring himself to open Brenda's email. Instead, he minimized it and tried to focus on his regular work tasks, but the green Post-it note kept drawing his attention like a malevolent beacon.

"Morning, Lin!" A voice jolted him from his thoughts. It was Kyle from Accounting, leaning over the cubicle wall. "Man, you look like hell. Rough weekend?"

Lin stared at Kyle, searching his face for any sign that this was all part of the cosmic joke. "Kyle, do you believe in the afterlife?"

Kyle blinked. "Uh, bit heavy for Monday morning, but sure. Heaven, Hell, all that stuff. My grandma was really into it. Why?"

"No reason." Lin turned back to his computer. "Just contemplating existence."

"Right." Kyle lingered awkwardly. "Anyway, there's a department meeting at 10. Brenda's got some new office policy she's rolling out."

Lin's stomach clenched. "About office supplies, by any chance?"

"Yeah, how'd you know? Something about color-coding Post-it notes. Sounds like a waste of time to me, but you know how Brenda gets."

After Kyle left, Lin pulled out his phone and checked the date. It was Monday—the same Monday from his dream, the day he had been fired. He searched his email inbox and found no previous communications about Post-it notes or office supply protocols.

This was his chance. He could avoid the mistake that got him fired. He could change his fate.

Lin opened his desk drawer again and carefully removed all the green Post-it notes, replacing them with yellow ones from the supply closet. He even found a copy of the "Office Supply Usage and Etiquette" manual and paged through it until he found Section 4, Subsection B, Paragraph 12—which indeed specified canary yellow Post-it notes for Level 3 interdepartmental memos.

The morning passed in a blur of anxiety as Lin triple-checked every document, made sure his coffee mug was properly positioned in the dishwasher, and remained absolutely silent near elevators to avoid accidental humming.

At 9:55, he made his way to the conference room for the department meeting. As people filed in, Lin noticed something odd—everyone looked slightly disheveled, with dark circles under their eyes and a certain hollow quality to their expressions. Even perky Janet from Marketing seemed subdued.

At exactly 10:00, Brenda entered the room. She was wearing the same outfit Lin remembered from his dream, down to the slightly crooked name badge.

"Good morning, everyone," she began, her voice carrying the forced cheerfulness of someone who had given up on genuine happiness decades ago. "Today we're rolling out an important new office policy regarding the proper use of office supplies."

Lin sat up straighter, alert to every word.

"As detailed in the updated 'Office Supply Usage and Etiquette' manual, we're implementing a color-coding system for Post-it notes. Level 1 memos will use standard yellow, Level 2 will use blue, and Level 3 interdepartmental memos must use neon green."

Lin froze. Neon green—not canary yellow as in his dream, and not as written in the manual he had just consulted.

"Excuse me," he interrupted, raising his hand. "I just checked the manual, and it says Level 3 should use canary yellow."

The room fell silent. Brenda's smile didn't waver, but her eyes narrowed slightly.

"No, Lin, the new policy states neon green. Perhaps you were looking at the old manual?"

"I got it from the supply closet this morning," Lin insisted, a sense of dread building. "It very clearly says yellow."

Brenda's smile tightened. "Well, it's green now. Any other questions?"

The meeting continued, but Lin barely heard a word. As soon as it ended, he rushed back to his desk and pulled out the manual again. There it was, in black and white: "Level 3 interdepartmental memos must be annotated with neon green Post-it notes only."

He flipped through the pages frantically, certain that wasn't what he had read earlier. At the back of the manual, on the last page, he found a single line of text that hadn't been there before:

"Policies subject to change retroactively at management's discretion. —D"

By lunchtime, Lin was convinced he was losing his mind. He had carefully avoided using any Post-it notes at all, but new anxieties kept surfacing. Was his stapler in the approved position? Was he using the correct font size in his emails? Was his breathing too audible?

"Wong, in my office. Now." The voice belonged to Mr. Winters, the department head—a man who seemed perpetually on the verge of a stress-induced aneurysm.

Lin followed him into a glass-walled office that offered the illusion of privacy while ensuring everyone could see when someone was being reprimanded.

"Sit," Winters commanded, gesturing to a chair that was noticeably lower than his own.

Lin sat, the chair sinking further than physics should have allowed, putting him at an almost childlike height compared to Winters.

"You caused quite a scene in the meeting this morning," Winters began, steepling his fingers.

"I was just trying to clarify the policy," Lin defended.

"By publicly contradicting HR? Not smart, Wong. Not smart at all."

"But the manual—"

"Is whatever HR says it is." Winters leaned forward. "Look, between you and me, none of this matters. Color-coded Post-it notes, proper stapler alignment—it's all just busywork to keep people in line. The real question is: are you a team player, Wong?"

The phrase sent a chill down Lin's spine. In corporate language, "team player" was code for "will you shut up and obey without question?"

"Yes, sir. I'm all about the team."

"Good." Winters leaned back, apparently satisfied. "Because we've got a special project for you. The quarterly reports need to be reformatted according to the new template. All 3,742 pages of them."

"That's... a lot of reformatting."

"Indeed. And it needs to be done by tomorrow morning." Winters smiled thinly. "I'm sure that won't be a problem for a team player like yourself."

As Lin left the office, he noticed everyone carefully avoiding eye contact with him—everyone except Kyle, who shot him a sympathetic look before quickly turning back to his computer.

The reformatting task was impossible. The new template required each page to be individually adjusted, with no way to automate the process. Lin worked through lunch, then through the afternoon, watching with increasing despair as the progress bar crept forward at a glacial pace.

By 6 PM, most of his colleagues had left, murmuring quick goodbyes without meeting his eyes. By 8 PM, he was alone in the office, the fluorescent lights humming overhead in a pattern that somehow felt malicious.

At 10 PM, he was only 30% finished, his eyes burning from staring at the screen. As he rubbed his face in exhaustion, he noticed a shadow fall across his keyboard.

"Working late, I see."

Lin looked up to find a man he'd never seen before leaning against his cubicle wall. The stranger wore an impeccable suit and had a name badge that simply read "D."

"Do I know you?" Lin asked, though a part of him already knew the answer.

"We've met," the man replied with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Though you might not remember clearly. Dreams can be so… slippery."

Lin's mouth went dry. "You're not real. This isn't happening."

"That's a philosophical question, isn't it? What is 'real'?" D picked up a pen from Lin's desk, twirling it between his fingers. "Is it what you can see? Touch? Or is it what you experience, regardless of the plane of existence?"

"What do you want from me?"

D placed the pen back on the desk, aligning it perfectly parallel to the edge. "Nothing you weren't already giving away freely. Your despair. Your frustration. Your slow realization that no matter what you do, the rules will change to ensure you fail."

"This is Hell," Lin whispered. "I never woke up, did I?"

"Oh, you woke up," D assured him. "Just not in the reality you think. Hell isn't a place, Lin. It's a condition. A state of being."

"So what is this? Some kind of personalized torture?"

D looked offended. "Torture is such an ugly word. I prefer 'customized existential experience.' And you've barely scratched the surface." He checked his watch—a timepiece that appeared to have several extra hands moving in contradictory directions. "Speaking of which, I should let you get back to your reformatting. Deadline's approaching."

As D turned to leave, Lin called after him, "Wait! Is there a way out? Can I escape?"

D paused, considering. "There's always a way out, Lin. The question is whether you'll recognize it when you see it." He smiled again, revealing teeth that were just slightly too numerous. "Sweet dreams."

Lin didn't remember falling asleep, but he must have. When he opened his eyes, his face was pressed against the keyboard, and his screen showed that the computer had been working all night—the reformatting was complete, with one minute to spare before the morning deadline.

"Miracle," he muttered, straightening up and wincing at the crick in his neck.

As other employees began arriving, Lin noticed they all looked even more haggard than the day before. Janet from Marketing had a twitch in her left eye that hadn't been there previously. Kyle's usually immaculate hair was disheveled, as if he'd been running his hands through it repeatedly.

"Morning meeting in five," Kyle murmured as he passed Lin's cubicle. "Winters is on a rampage."

The conference room was exactly the same as the day before, down to the slightly flickering light in the corner and the chair with the wobbly leg that everyone avoided. As employees filed in, Lin realized they were all taking the exact same seats they had occupied yesterday.

Mr. Winters entered at precisely 9:00 AM, carrying a stack of papers.

"The quarterly reports," he announced, dropping them on the table with a thud. "Reformatted as requested."

Lin felt a surge of relief. He'd completed the impossible task.

"Unfortunately," Winters continued, "they were formatted according to template version 7.3. The correct version is 7.3.1."

A collective groan rippled through the room.

"The differences are subtle but significant," Winters explained, projecting a comparison onto the screen that showed two virtually identical templates. "The line spacing in 7.3.1 is 1.05, not 1.06 as in 7.3. Additionally, the header font is Arial 12, not Arial 12.1."

Lin stared in disbelief. "That's... those differences are imperceptible. No one would ever notice."

The room fell silent. Winters fixed Lin with a cold stare.

"No one would notice?" Winters repeated slowly. "No one? Are you suggesting that our attention to detail is meaningless, Wong?"

"No, I just meant—"

"What you meant," Winters interrupted, "is that you think your time is more valuable than company standards. You think you know better than upper management."

Lin felt the walls closing in. Every pair of eyes in the room was trained on him, a mix of fear and relief that someone else was the target of Winters' wrath.

"I'll redo them," Lin said quickly. "All 3,742 pages. It won't be a problem."

Winters smiled thinly. "Excellent. And since you've expressed such... opinions about our standards, you can also audit the previous four quarters' reports to ensure they all meet the 7.3.1 template specifications."

"But that's—" Lin did the mental math. Over 15,000 pages. "That's impossible to complete in any reasonable timeframe."

"Then I suggest you get started immediately," Winters replied. "Deadline is end of day. Tomorrow." He gathered his papers and headed for the door, then paused. "Oh, and Wong? Your annual performance review has been moved up. Tomorrow morning, 8 AM sharp."

After the meeting, Lin sat at his desk in a daze. The task was physically impossible. Even if he worked around the clock without breaks, even if he spent just seconds on each page, he couldn't review over 15,000 documents in 36 hours.

"Psst." Kyle appeared at his cubicle entrance. "Break room. Five minutes." He walked away before Lin could respond.

Five minutes later, Lin found Kyle lurking by the coffee machine, nervously glancing around.

"Listen," Kyle whispered, "I know what you're going through. It happened to me last month."

"The impossible deadline?"

Kyle nodded. "Different task, same setup. They're setting you up to fail."

"But why?"

"It's how they weed people out. Give them an impossible task, then fire them for not completing it." Kyle's voice dropped even lower. "But there's a way to beat it."

Lin leaned in. "How?"

"The system doesn't actually check the content of the reformatted files. It just checks that they've been accessed and resaved. There's a script—" Kyle slipped a flash drive into Lin's hand. "—this will automate the process. It'll look like you're reviewing each file manually, but it'll do everything automatically."

Lin clutched the drive like a lifeline. "Why are you helping me?"

Kyle's eyes darted around the break room. "Because I'm stuck here too. We all are. The only way to survive is to help each other." He started to walk away, then turned back. "Oh, and if anyone asks, this conversation never happened. They're always watching."

Back at his desk, Lin inserted the flash drive and found a single file: "salvation.exe." His cursor hovered over it. Could he trust Kyle? Or was this another trap?

With no better options, Lin clicked the file. A command window opened briefly, then disappeared. His screen flickered, and suddenly all his applications closed. A moment later, they reopened, and a progress bar appeared at the bottom of his screen: "Reformatting in progress: 0.01% complete."

It was working. The script was automatically processing the files at a rate that would finish just before the deadline.

For the first time since his "return" from Hell, Lin felt a glimmer of hope. He could beat this system. He could survive.

His relief was short-lived. As he watched the progress bar inch forward, he noticed something in his peripheral vision—a red light blinking on the ceiling. A security camera was pointed directly at his workstation.

Before he could react, his phone rang. The caller ID displayed simply: "IT."

"H-hello?" Lin answered.

"Unauthorized software detected on your workstation," said a monotone voice. "Please remain at your desk. Security has been dispatched."

Lin looked up to see two large men in black suits entering the office area. They moved with mechanical precision, heading straight for his cubicle.

"No, wait," Lin pleaded as they approached. "I can explain!"

The guards said nothing as they flanked him. One disconnected his computer while the other gestured for Lin to stand.

"Please follow us, Mr. Wong," the guard said. "Mr. Winters would like to see you immediately."

Winters' office had changed. The glass walls were now solid, the modern furniture replaced with heavy wooden pieces that looked centuries old. Even Winters himself seemed different—his suit was the same, but his eyes had a reddish tint that hadn't been there before.

"Sit," Winters commanded, pointing to what was now a straight-backed wooden chair with restraints dangling from the armrests.

Lin remained standing. "I know what this is now. This isn't real. None of it is."

Winters smiled, his teeth too perfect to be human. "Of course it's real, Lin. What's your alternative explanation? That you're in Hell? That this is all some elaborate punishment? How narcissistic."

"Kyle gave me that program. He said you were setting me up to fail."

"Kyle?" Winters looked confused. "There's no Kyle in Accounting. There never has been."

Lin's head swam. He stumbled to the door, yanking it open—only to find himself looking not at the office beyond, but at an endless hallway lined with identical doors.

"You can't leave, Lin," Winters said from behind him. "You signed the contract."

"I never signed anything!"

"Oh, but you did." Winters opened a drawer and pulled out a thick document. "Right here. 'I, Lin Wong, being of sound mind and questionable career choices, do hereby consign my eternal soul to Pinnacle Solutions...'"

Lin slammed the door shut and ran down the hallway. Each door he passed had a nameplate: names he recognized, names of colleagues, friends, even his parents. He kept running until his lungs burned, until the hallway began to blur around him.

Finally, he collapsed against a wall, gasping for breath. The hallway stretched endlessly in both directions, identical doors as far as he could see.

"There's no way out," said a voice beside him. Lin turned to find an elderly man sitting on a bench that hadn't been there a moment ago. The man wore a janitor's uniform with a name tag that read "JEROME."

"Who are you?" Lin asked.

"Been here longer than most," Jerome replied, wiping his glasses with a cloth. "Fifty-three years, if my calculations are correct. Though time moves differently here, so who knows?"

"This is Hell, isn't it? The office is Hell."

Jerome shrugged. "Hell, corporate purgatory, eternal damnation—labels don't really matter when you're trapped, do they?"

"There must be a way out," Lin insisted. "Derek—the demon—he said there's always a way out."

"Ah, Derek." Jerome nodded. "He would know. He found his way out."

Lin sat up straighter. "How? How did he escape?"

"Same way they all do," Jerome said, pointing upward. "The roof."

"The roof? You mean... suicide?"

Jerome nodded. "Jump once, you end up here. Jump twice..." He made a whistling sound followed by a splat gesture with his hands.

"End up where? A deeper level of Hell?"

"Nobody knows. They don't come back to tell the tale." Jerome stood up, bones creaking. "Back to work for me. They don't let you rest long in this place. If you're looking for the roof access, it's the red door at the end of the hall."

"But the hall is endless," Lin protested.

Jerome smiled mysteriously. "Is it? Or does it just seem that way because you're afraid to reach the end?"

With that, he shuffled away, pushing his mop along the gleaming floor.

Lin stood up, a new determination filling him. He would find the red door. He would jump again. Whatever waited beyond had to be better than this eternal corporate nightmare.

He walked with purpose now, no longer running but steadily moving forward. As Jerome had implied, the hallway wasn't actually endless. After what felt like hours of walking, Lin saw it—a red door at the end of the corridor, with a simple sign: "ROOF ACCESS."

His hand trembled as he reached for the handle. The door opened easily, revealing a narrow staircase spiraling upward. Lin climbed, his steps echoing in the confined space.

The roof was eerily similar to the one he had jumped from in his "real" life—flat, surrounded by a low parapet, with a breathtaking view of a city below. Except this city wasn't any he recognized. The buildings twisted at impossible angles, streets curved back on themselves, and the sky had a sickly green tint.

Lin approached the edge, looking down at the dizzying drop. Was Jerome right? Would a second jump free him from this nightmare?

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," said a voice behind him.

Lin turned to find a man sitting on an air conditioning unit, smoking a cigarette. He was dressed in ordinary clothes—jeans, t-shirt, sneakers—and looked completely out of place in this surreal setting.

"Who are you?" Lin asked.

"Someone who's been where you are," the man replied. "Name's Alex. Jumped from this very roof about... oh, thirty years ago? Hard to keep track."

"Did it work? Did you escape?"

Alex laughed, a hollow sound. "There is no escape, kid. You jump, you just end up in a different department. I went from Corporate to Food Service. Spent twenty years washing dishes before finding my way back here."

Lin's hope deflated. "So there's no way out? We're just trapped forever?"

"I didn't say that." Alex flicked his cigarette butt over the edge, watching it fall. "There's a way out. Just not the one you're thinking of."

"What is it? Please, tell me."

Alex studied Lin for a long moment. "The way out isn't down. It's through."

"Through what?"

"Through the illusion. This—" Alex gestured at the surreal cityscape "—isn't real. But it's not a dream either. It's a construct. Your construct."

"I don't understand."

"No one does at first." Alex stood up. "Look, I can't tell you exactly how to escape because everyone's exit is different. But I can tell you this: Whatever you're most afraid of facing in life, that's your way out here."

"My biggest fear?" Lin thought about it. What terrified him most wasn't death or pain or even eternal corporate damnation. It was... "Failure. I'm afraid of failing."

Alex nodded. "Then that's your door. Find it. Walk through it." He turned to leave.

"Wait!" Lin called. "What about you? Why are you still here if you know the way out?"

Alex smiled sadly. "Some of us have been here so long we've forgotten who we were before. Can't find an exit if you can't remember what you're afraid of." He pulled open a maintenance door that Lin hadn't noticed before. "Good luck, kid. Hope I don't see you around."

The door closed behind Alex, leaving Lin alone on the roof. He stepped back from the edge, newfound understanding dawning. Jumping wasn't the answer. Neither was running or hiding.

He had to face his fear. He had to embrace failure.