May Season Studio Archives
by Gintare O.
It was 11:24 when Karen appeared at the entrance of Genny’s cube. She had her coat folded over one arm and her lunch bag in the other hand, which meant she was on her way out and had stopped on the way, which meant whatever this was would not take long, or would, because Karen’s sense of how long things took was different from everyone else’s.
She had a sticky note in her hand.
Genny saw the sticky note before she saw Karen’s face, which was usually the order things happened in. The sticky note was yellow. It had been folded once, then unfolded, then refolded along the same crease, and Karen was holding it by one corner the way you hold something you want to be done with.
Genny took her headphones off.
It was annual review week. She had forgotten. The reminder had been in her calendar in March and she had moved it twice and then it had quietly fallen off when she rebuilt her calendar in April, and she had not thought about it again until this exact moment, looking at a folded yellow sticky note in Karen’s hand at 11:24 on a Thursday.
“They were due last week. I’m doing them this week.” Karen extended the sticky note. “Here.”
Genny did not take it immediately. There was a half-second where she looked at the sticky note and then at Karen and then back at the sticky note, trying to determine whether the correct response was to take it or to wait for an explanation of what was on it.
Karen did not provide one.
“It’s your number,” she said. “And the percent. The percent is the second one. The dollar amount is the first.”
“Oh.”
“The HR portal updates Friday.”
Genny took the sticky note.
She did not unfold it. It felt strange to unfold it in front of Karen, even though Karen had clearly already read it, had likely written it, had certainly held it folded long enough to have memorized both numbers. Unfolding it would mean reacting to the numbers in front of the woman who had written them down. Genny was not prepared to do that.
She set the sticky note on her desk, face down.
Karen watched her do this.
“You can look at it,” Karen said.
“I will.”
“It’s a normal raise.”
“Okay.”
There was a silence that Genny recognized from previous Karen interactions. It was the silence Karen used when she had said something she expected a response to and was waiting to see what the response would be. The silence was not patient. It was evaluative.
“Thank you,” Genny said.
Karen nodded once. “HR wants me to do these in the conference room.” She said this the way she had said the cake was dry at Dennis Call’s retirement, which was without irritation, just identifying a problem with the system. “I don’t have time to do six of these in the conference room. So this is how I do them.”
“That makes sense.”
“Frank’s was Monday. He cried. In the cube. I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Oh.”
“I’m telling you so you know not to.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Good.”
Karen shifted her coat to the other arm. She had not left yet. The sticky note was still face down on Genny’s desk. Genny had her hands in her lap because she did not know what to do with them.
“If you have questions you can come to me directly. Or you can email HR.” She paused. “I would not recommend emailing HR.”
“Okay.”
Karen looked at her watch, which she still wore even though she also checked her phone. “Look at the number after I leave.”
Karen left.
Genny watched her go. She heard the elevator chime in the distance, then the soft mechanical sigh of the doors closing, then nothing. The office breathed out the way it always did at 11:30. Across the aisle, Blake stood up from his cube, looked toward Karen’s empty desk to confirm, and walked to the break room without putting on his jacket.
Genny sat with the sticky note face down for another full minute.
Then she turned it over.
The dollar amount was on top. The percent was below it, in slightly smaller numbers, as if Karen had run out of room and had to compress the second figure to fit. The handwriting was Karen’s, which Genny recognized from years of edits in margins. Both numbers were underlined twice.
It was a little better than last year’s.
Genny refolded the sticky note along its existing crease and put it in the back of her notebook, behind the divider, where she kept things she did not want to look at again that day but might need to look at later.
She put her headphones back on.
She had forty minutes of lunch hour and nobody to spend it with, which was the way she preferred it.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
at may season studio, we document the quiet mechanics that hold our world together, the routines, the tensions, and the moments that should not have happened but did anyway. this entry reflects another observation from within our walls.
written and designed by gintare okrzesik, creator of may season studio, a fictional corporation exploring beauty, bureaucracy, and quiet corruption through narrative design.
Filed Under: product catalog division / from the may season studio employee files
Begin with:
The Lunch Hour
The Retirement of Dennis Call
The Company That Regulates Reality
Then follow the trail.
Karen is such a funny weird person. It's interesting that she can get away with not doing things the way that HR told her to do them.
Just stumbled upon this. I need to read more of your other work to place it, but you have a very good voice in this piece. Genny and Karen are immediately relatable as someone we know, or a type we know. Going on to another one of yours, and thanks for subscribing to me.