Pyramid Schemes and Seventh Inning Stretches

The corporate hierarchy rose like a pyramid from my cubicle, each level more rarefied than the last. I'd been climbing it for twelve years, my palm pressed against the glass walls of conference rooms where decisions were made that affected thousands of lives I'd never see.

"You're not playing the game, Elena," Marcus had told me during my performance review. He'd made a baseball analogy—something about stepping up to the plate, taking swings. I'd wanted to tell him that not everyone wanted to play ball. That some of us were just trying to survive the inning.

That night, I found myself at a crossroads—literally and figuratively. The pedestrian signal flashed a steady red hand, palm outward, commanding me to wait. But the empty street stretched in both directions, and suddenly, the pyramid scheme of my life—the deferred promotions, the postponed happiness, the someday promotions—felt suffocating.

I thought about my father, who'd taken me to baseball games every Sunday. He'd loved the simplicity of it: nine innings, clear rules, you either win or lose. Corporate America was nothing like that. It was endless extra innings with no scorecard, where the same people kept trading places while the rest of us sat in the bleachers, paying increasingly expensive tickets for worse seats.

The light turned green. Instead of walking toward my apartment and the life I'd carefully constructed, I turned left, toward the palm reader who'd set up shop in a storefront that had housed six failed businesses in three years. Maybe she'd see something in the lines of my hand that I couldn't see myself anymore.

The pyramid glittered in the distance—a downtown skyscraper I'd once given everything to climb. Now, under the streetlights, it just looked like another tombstone in a city of monuments to ambition. Baseball season would start again in three months. This time, I decided, I wasn't playing for the home team anymore.