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QUENTIN NORRIS
Anna was already having a bad day before the email popped up in her inbox, so the subject just felt like a slap in the face. Since when was Paul leaving, and why was she the last to hear about it? Paul had been the first person at the company to talk to her when she started three years ago. He had only been working there for a few weeks before she was hired but he already seemed like he’d been there for ages. That was how easily Paul adapted to any situation. He was such a glowing ball of sunshine, and he was pretty as hell too. It was no wonder Anna immediately developed a crush on him. She wasn’t the only one. She’d overheard a few other girls from the design team browsing through his Instagram profile once, practically drooling over his pictures. She knew she had to say something to him before he left, but for some reason, she found herself resenting the fact
№ 13 BENCH WARMER
that he was leaving. It felt like a personal betrayal. What happened to the unspoken bond that she shared with everyone from the customer service team when she first started here? When she started, there were ten of them. They were a ragtag team of weirdos and misfits. They were the ones that the rest of the company seemed to want to ignore, to pretend like they weren’t there. They weren’t programmers, product design, or social media experts. They just took phone calls from angry people who didn’t understand the terms and services of a subscription service app. It was never said out loud, but Anna had always thought there was an agreement between everyone in the customer service team to never join the ranks of all the normies that took their jobs too seriously, or that they’d stick together and never leave
