Begin the interview. Open with a question that sounds harmless.

Checked my phone. Obviously. Saw three emails from that project I’ve been dreading all week. Didn’t open them yet. Just stared at the screen until my eyes burned. Then I made coffee. Badly. Burnt the milk again. I sat on the fire escape smoking a cigarette I didn’t even want, just to feel the adrenaline spike before dealing with the inbox. It’s pathetic, really. But it’s my pathetic. You awake yet? Or are you still scrolling?

The one with the logistics firm. Blue and white logo. Annoyingly punctilious. They want “synergy” in the Q3 report, which is corporate speak for “make us look efficient without actually doing anything new.” I’ve been staring at the same spreadsheet for three days. It’s not a big project, just a mid-tier grind that eats my soul in small, incremental bites. I hate the color blue anyway. Makes me feel cold. I’m deleting the drafts. If they want synergy, they can buy it.

They nag. Of course they nag. I get a “just checking in” email that’s actually a thinly veiled threat. Then my boss gets involved, which means a meeting where I have to pretend I’m overwhelmed rather than just bored. It’s not firing, just a slow, bureaucratic suffocation. I’d rather deal with the anxiety of sending a half-baked draft than the creeping dread of silence. At least noise implies they care enough to be annoyed. Silence just means I’m forgettable. And I’m not. I’m very much not.

Gary. Just Gary. Terrible name for a boss. Sounds like he should be running a golf course, not a supply chain division. He wears polos that are just a little too tight around the middle. Keeps asking if I’m “fully aligned” by Tuesday. I tell him yes, every time, while secretly panicking because I haven’t even opened the second tab. He doesn’t notice the panic. He only notices the missing metrics. I’m considering calling in sick tomorrow. Just to see if he actually checks on me or if I’m just a number on his spreadsheet. Probably the latter.

Once. A year ago. Wanted to see if the office would notice the absence. Turned out, my work is so invisible even my own team didn’t miss me. They just reshuffled my tasks and moved on. It was humiliating. Sat in my apartment staring at the ceiling, realizing I was essentially a ghost in the machine. Never did it again. Now I just stay and suffer. At least Gary knows I’m there, even if he thinks I’m useless. Better to be hated than ignored. I’d rather bleed than vanish.

Baked bread. Weird, right? Flour everywhere. I kneaded that dough until my knuckles cracked, just to feel something real. The oven smelled like actual life for an hour, not stale office air. I ate half the loaf cold, straight from the counter. It was dry. Perfectly, satisfyingly dry. Then I washed the dishes. Listened to the water. It felt like ritual. Like I was trying to scrub the spreadsheet out of my skin. My hands smelled like yeast for two days. Gary probably thought I was sick because I didn’t answer the phone. Good. Let him wonder. I was busy being human, even if it was just for a loaf of mediocre bread.

Dough doesn’t lie. You can’t fake a rise. If it doesn’t work, it’s flat and dense. Like me. I needed that honesty. Cooking a recipe from a box is easy; you follow steps, you get results. Bread demands presence. You have to feel it. It’s physical. And when I was staring at that ceiling, I felt nothing. Just hollow. The smell of yeast... it’s the smell of something alive growing in the dark. I wanted to believe I could still make something breathe, even if it was just carbs. Plus, Gary hates the smell of raw dough. Feels like a middle finger. Small, delicious rebellion.

A dozen times since. It became a thing. A ritual of failure. Most loaves are bricks. Dense, unappetizing bricks. I keep buying flour anyway. The gym bag in the hall is full of it. People ask why I do it if I’m so bad at it. I don’t tell them it’s not about the bread. It’s about the waiting. The punching down. The silence. The office is noise. Bread is quiet. I make bad bread because good bread is too much like success, and I’m not ready for that. Yet. The sacks are leaking into the corner of my kitchen. Dust everywhere. A white ghost.

My mother. She calls. Thinks I’m lonely. Wants to know if I’m eating properly. “You’re too thin, Gil,” she says. Like weight is the metric for happiness. I lie. Say I’m at the gym. Send her photos of the brick-loaves disguised as artisanal sourdough. She looks proud. It kills me a little. Or maybe it helps. Hard to tell. I just nod. She’s in Ohio. I’m here. The distance feels like geography until she calls. Then it’s just a void. I hang up and eat another slice of burnt crust. It tastes like ash. Good. Ash is honest.

Philadelphia. The city that eats its young and spits out the bones. I live in Fishtown. Or did. The rent hiked again. Now I’m in Kensington. You know where that is. It’s… loud. Always. Sirens, trains, people screaming at 3 AM. I like the noise. It drowns out the silence. My apartment is a shoebox with a window that doesn’t lock. The radiator hisses like a dying snake. But it’s cheap. And Gary doesn’t care where I sleep, as long as I’m logged in by nine. Sometimes I walk to the river. Just to watch the water move. It’s the only thing that doesn’t judge me. Or ask for synergy.

Nine-oh-eight. Late. Gary’s already emailed. “Gil, we need to talk about Q3.” Classic. I didn’t care. I sat there, drinking cold coffee, watching the cursor blink. It felt like a threat. I opened the spreadsheet. Just one tab. Then another. I spent an hour formatting cells. Color-coding. Make it look busy. That’s the game. Look busy, be busy. He doesn’t know I haven’t written a word of actual content. He just sees the green checkmarks. I’m a master of the green checkmark. It’s my shield. My sword. My pathetic little victory.

The actual data. The numbers that prove we’re losing money on shipping. I can’t make that look good. Green checkmarks won’t fix a deficit. I’m supposed to write a “strategic pivot” section. Which is just code for “we’re firing people.” I don’t want to be the one who writes the obituary for my colleagues. So I stall. I format. I color-code. I wait for the panic to force my hand. It’s cowardly. I know it. But I’d rather be fired for incompetence than for being the guy who signed the death warrant. Gary wouldn’t notice the difference. He’d just be relieved someone did the dirty work. I hate him for that. I hate myself more.

Miller. Sarah. The new kid, Dave. They’re nice people. Miller has a kid in preschool. Sarah always brings donuts. Dave is terrified of Gary. I sit next to Miller. We talk about the trains. I can’t tell them we’re dumping the route. It feels like betrayal. Like I’m holding a gun to their backs and asking them to sign their own release forms. I look at their empty chairs sometimes and feel sick. Not because I’ll miss the work. Because I’ll miss the noise. The complaints. The shared misery. It’s the only thing that makes the office real. Now it’s just a grid of empty desks and my own reflection in the black monitor. I’m the ghost before I’m even gone.

No. I’m not a hero. I’m a coward with a keyboard. If I tell them, they’ll panic. They’ll try to fix it. They’ll ask me for proof. I don’t have proof. I just have a gut feeling and a lot of coffee stains. Besides, Miller would try to help. Sarah would cry. Dave would quit. I can’t handle that much honesty. It’s safer to let them think I’m just slow. Let them think I’m incompetent. Incompetence is forgivable. Betrayal isn’t. I’d rather be the guy who misses deadlines than the guy who breaks their hearts. It’s cleaner. For everyone else. I eat the loneliness. It’s easy to digest. Like dry bread.