Goldfish in the Tank

The goldfish had been swimming in the same figure-eight pattern for three years. Meredith knew this because she'd timed it during a particularly boring conference call, watching from the reception area where she'd been exiled after refusing to sleep with the VP of Sales.

The orange sat on her desk, slowly browning at the edges. It had been part of a fruit basket delivered by a vendor who wanted them to buy enterprise software nobody needed. The card had said THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX. The irony was not lost on her.

'You have spinach in your teeth,' David said, leaning against her doorframe. He was twenty-four, wore suits that didn't fit, and would be running the department in five years because he was twenty-four and wore suits that didn't fit. 'Need a mirror?'

Meredith ran her tongue along her teeth. She'd eaten the salad from the cafeteria because her doctor said her cholesterol was high—another sign of aging in a workplace that worshipped the young. 'I'm good.'

'He's wearing the hat again,' David said, nodding toward the executive floor. 'The fedora.'

The CEO had started wearing the hat after his midlife crisis divorce. He was sixty, trying to look like a character from Mad Men, succeeding only in looking like a parody of himself. The hat had become a symbol of everything wrong with the company: out of touch, desperately clinging to relevance, entirely unaware of how ridiculous it appeared.

The goldfish turned in its tank.

Meredith stood up. 'I'm going to quit,' she said.

David raised his eyebrows. 'Today?'

'Right now.' She picked up the orange. It was soft in her hand, beginning to rot. 'You want this?'

'No.'

She walked toward the elevator. The goldfish kept swimming its endless loop, trapped in glass, watched by no one. In the lobby, the CEO was showing his hat to a group of investors, all of them nodding. Meredith walked past them, orange in hand, and stepped out into the sunshine.