The Layoff Pool

The betting pool had reached eight thousand dollars.

Elena stared at the spreadsheet on her screen, the numbers blurring together. Three names remained in the water-soaked margins of her notebook: Jackson, Mei, and Darren. Senior management had scheduled the meeting for 3 PM—running on time, as always. Her coffee mug sat untouched, cold brew gone cold.

She'd been running this department for seven years. Through acquisitions, reorgs, the great remote work pivot of '22. She'd survived because she made herself necessary. Because she knew whose families depended on insurance, whose mortgages were underwater, whose divorces had left them one paycheck from homelessness.

Jackson's wife had cancer. Mei's mother needed nursing care. Darren was putting his daughter through college.

The pool's winner would be whoever guessed the exact number of layoffs. Callous, they all knew it, but what wasn't callous these days? The entire company had become a floating game of musical chairs, and someone had turned off the music.

Elena's phone buzzed. A text from her husband: "Remember we're running the 5K this weekend. Can't back out again."

She'd been forgetting everything lately. The dog's vet appointment. Her sister's birthday. The way her husband used to look at her across the dinner table before promotions and pipelines and quarterly earnings drowned everything else.

At 2:55 PM, she walked down the hallway. The carpet squelched faintly beneath her heels—a pipe had burst on floor four last week. Maintenance had taped a yellow caution sign to the wall: Wet Floor. The tape was peeling.

In the conference room, the CEO waited beside a carafe of water. He'd aged since Elena joined the company. More gray in his beard, more wear in his eyes. Or maybe she was just projecting.

"Two positions," he said, not looking at her. "Budget cuts."

Her heart hammered against her ribs. Not three. Two. Someone would survive.

"Jackson and Darren," she heard herself say. The words hung in the air like smoke.

She'd known before walking in. The pool numbers shifted in her head: eight thousand dollars to the person who'd guessed two.

That night, she lay beside her sleeping husband, staring at the ceiling. In the bathroom, the faucet dripped. Water against porcelain. A sound like time running out.

She'd won the pool. She'd never entered her name.