May Season Studio Archives
by Gintare O.
PRECEDING FILES
Onboarding / 02 / The Invitation
Onboarding / 07 / The Loading Dock
Onboarding / 08 / The Tech Bar
The next morning she came in at 7:58. She did her queue. She took the stairs. This was, she noticed, a small change she was making to her life. She made it without discussing it with anyone.
Two weeks passed.
She did not receive another calendar invite from Christina.
She did not hear Christina’s name at the office.
She had assumed, quietly, that the invite had been an administrative mistake. Not the wellness part. The Genny part. Something had gone out to a name it had not been meant for. That was a thing she could hold.
Then, on a Tuesday, Christina found her at the lobby Starbucks.
Genny was in line for a refill. She had decided today would be a normal day. She had told herself this several times before getting in the elevator to come down.
She was second in line when a person she did not immediately place slid up beside her and said her name.
She turned.
It was Christina.
Christina worked in HR-adjacent capacity. Everyone said HR-adjacent because Christina had a title nobody had ever quite learned. She was often in the building. She was frequently in meetings that were not on any calendar. She had a pleasant face and a professional demeanor and a way of holding a folder against her chest that suggested she was always in the middle of finishing something for someone.
She had never spoken to Genny in person before.
“Hi Genny. Do you mind if I sit with you for a minute.”
Genny had not asked to sit. Genny had been in line.
“Sure.”
Christina went to a table by the window. Genny got her coffee and joined her.
Christina had already ordered. Her cup was in front of her, hot enough to steam. She had not touched it.
“How are you settling in.”
Genny had been at MSS for four years.
“Fine,” she said. “Thank you for asking.”
“That’s good. That’s very good. Just checking in, since you’re such an important part of the team.”
Genny watched her. Christina’s face was composed. It was composed in the specific way a face is composed when the person is running through a list they have practiced.
“Has anything felt unusual lately.”
Genny did not answer immediately. She was thinking about all the words that could be true and all the ones that could not.
“No.”
Christina watched her for a moment. It was a beat longer than a moment. Then she smiled, gently.
“Good. We like things usual.”
She reached into her folder. She took out a small card. It was cream. Thick. The kind of paper Genny had held before.
She slid it across the table.
There was one word on it in oxblood ink.
Elaine.
No title. No phone number. No email. Just the name.
“If anything does feel unusual, you call Elaine. Not me. Not HR. Not Karen. Elaine.”
Genny looked at the card.
“How do I call someone without a number.”
Christina smiled again. Same gentleness.
“You’ll know.”
She stood up.
She left the coffee on the table, untouched, still steaming.
She was gone before Genny had picked up the card.
Genny sat at the table for another minute. She looked at the coffee. She looked at the card. She did not touch either.
Then she put the card in her bag, in the inside zipper pocket, where the invitation had lived, in the pocket she never used.
She got up.
She walked back to her cube.
The notebook, in her drawer, was where she had left it.
She put the card next to it.
Then she closed the drawer.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
at may season studio, employees are given a point of contact for anything that falls outside normal operations. the point of contact is a name. employees who need it have never had difficulty reaching it.
written and designed by gintare okrzesik, creator of may season studio. a fictional corporation exploring beauty, bureaucracy, and quiet corruption through narrative design.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The company has a process for this. Several of its steps are documented.
Begin with:
HR Memo: Personal Care - how the company addresses its employees about things they may have noticed
Compliance Notice: Narrative Drift Detected - what gets sent when an employee’s account stops matching the record
Exit Interview: Surface Division - the conversation at the other end of the process
Part eleven arrives next Friday.
Ah, intuition.
So many questions that I never want answered about this one.