The Wellness Coordinator's Lament

Maya stood by the office water cooler, watching the bubbles rise in the plastic bottle like tiny prayers ascending to heaven. She'd been the company's Wellness Coordinator for six months, a title that sounded promising but mostly meant she organized vitamin dispensaries and hydration challenges for people who treated her emails like spam.

The office was full of them now—the corporate zombies. Not the brain-eating kind from movies, but something more insidious: employees whose souls had been slowly extracted by quarterly targets and performance reviews. She saw it in their dead eyes during morning stand-ups, the way they shuffled to the breakroom at 3 PM, their movements mechanical, their laughter hollow.

"Have you taken your daily vitamin yet?" she'd asked David that morning, watching him stare blankly at his spreadsheet. He'd looked up, eyes rimmed with red, and for a moment she'd seen something flicker behind the exhaustion. A spark. A memory of who he used to be.

"I forgot," he'd said, and something in his voice made her wonder if he was talking about more than supplements.

Now Maya filled her paper cup with water, her hands trembling slightly. She'd received an offer yesterday—a startup that promised better pay, actual work-life balance, a chance to feel human again. But she'd also seen how David's face lit up when she remembered his daughter's name, how the new intern seemed less terrified when Maya shared her stash of emergency snacks.

The zombies weren't gone, she realized. They were just waiting for someone to see them. Waiting for someone to remember that beneath the hollowed-out shells of overworked professionals, actual human beings still existed. People who needed more than vitamin packets and hydration reminders. People who needed someone to give a damn.

Maya drained her cup and crumpled it. She'd accept the job offer. But first, she'd teach someone else how to really see them.