Reminder: Be Durable Polyester Carpet In the Next Life
All “business professionals” crawl under their desks to cry, their bank account overdrawn (again), munching candy that coworkers slide beneath the plywood desktop. We all decorate our cubicle walls with drawings by our children, photos of our families, and potted plants that we fail to water, then revive, then fail again. All of us place small plastic goats to the left of our desktops that scream when we push down on them—wild, ugly, depraved screams that fill the room, saying “I’m okay. See? I’m fine.” Screams that ease laughs from workers drowning in hyper-focus, drowning in code, drowning in editing edits.
But they’re drowning. Not me.
I open my Erin Condren planner each day, cursing myself for buying it before reading up on the controversy, cursing myself for each barren page—no meetings, no parent teacher conferences, no basketball practice for the five-year-old, wellness exams for the smaller one—cursing myself because of course I have meetings, parent teacher conferences, basketball practice, wellness exams, fitness classes, therapy, appointments with the endocrinologist, and so much laundry I may asphyxiate on a wool dryer ball before a sleepless night comes to take me instead. I simply forgot when I’m supposed to do those things. Remind me?
For nearly a month I slathered Benadryl cream against on-again-off-again hives. I switched detergents, modified my diet, changed the bedding, swapped out my body wash, my razor, my shaving cream, my shampoo. “Maybe it’s stress,” a coworker suggested when I decided to lie flat on my back in the aisle between cubicles, pitying myself and my inflamed skin. Stress? I have no time for stress, no room for it. Fuck you, hives. I stole my daughter’s steroid cream and that cleared it up fine.
The hives weren’t around when I interviewed eager candidates for a recent writing position. It’s bizarre to look at the faces of young writers, begging for a chance to get paid for their writing. Bizarre when I myself am a young writer who lost writing in the business of it all. Who can’t seem to drudge it up again. Is that the phrase? “Drudge it up?”
They tell me their experience, show me their work, talk about SEO and keywords and dealing with conflict before I say, “Thank you,” now only to call them up later with “Sorry, but.” Their disappointment salts a bland “thanks for letting me know.” Chat AI threatens to suck up their next opportunity, swallowing writing jobs and punctuating it with a dismissive burp of plagiarism. Kinda.
Today I pressed my forehead to the desk, fingers stretched on the keys in front of me, writing, writing, writing without ever looking up. I’ll take a break for Diet Coke, a pack of Famous Amos from the company kitchen, and a text to my husband. My day is fine. Busy. You?
My day’s good. Hey, are you picking up kids? The kids. Two of them—somehow also two thousand. I pay the equivalent of a second mortgage for daycare in a daycare desert, a childcare wasteland. We wait-listed them both; one for six months, one for eight. I worked from home in the meantime, breastfeeding an infant on my lap as I wrote proposals and created poorly-designed spreadsheets. Now I pay thousands for other women to potty train them and teach them the ABCs.
“Having someone else raise our children is not for us,” a friend said once. I flipped her off when she turned away. What am I supposed to say? Sorry my children are…disadvantaged. Which of course is bullshit, until I start to believe it. Every day. Right around lunch. And then un-believe it when I pick them up.
“Mom, can I play Xbox when we get home?” “Mom, can I have a cracker?” “Not that cracker, a graham cracker.” “I don’t want pizza for dinner.” “Dad said he’d take us to McDonald’s.” “I don’t wanna take a bath.” “I don’t want to share.” “I wanna do it myself.” “I need help.” “That smells, Mom.” “I love you, Mom.”
What was that thing I was supposed to do again?
Can you do this, ChatBot? You can do it all. Though you certainly lack some semblance of humanity, the part that crawls under the desk, gets hives, lies on the floor during work hours with an apologetic(ish) nod to your boss, forgets the to-do lists, forgets to write the list, forgets to say, “I love you, too.” But if I keep telling myself I’m better than you, then I will be. That’s how this all works, right? We just will it, will it, will it, until it breaks. Crying under the desk, drowning, turns out, in entitlement.
-Nikole Rios
Nikole Rios is an emerging creative writer from the heart of Utah with a professional career in technical and educational writing. Several pieces of her fiction and nonfiction have been featured in literary journals Warp & Weave and Touchstones. Her flash fiction “Back of My ‘99 Ford Escort,” received Best in Prose following its Touchstones publication. Nikole often writes about motherhood, childhood, and speculation about the culture and history of the American Southwest.