Good Flow

Elly stood when Martin entered the waiting room.

“It’s so great to finally meet you in person,” Elly said, shaking his hand. “Although, and maybe this is inappropriate to say, I feel as though I’ve really gotten to know you over these past few weeks!”

“Well, some would say eight rounds of Zoom interviews is overkill for a junior graphic designer role,” said Martin, “but we just want to be thorough, you know?”

“I totally understand,” said Elly, who’d used almost all of her vacation at her current job just to accommodate the interview schedule.

“But since you’ve made it this far, it’s almost like the tables have turned,” Martin said. “You’re interviewing us now! Haha! So we thought, it’s time to pull out all the stops and show you around, give you an idea of day-to-day life at the office. Here, right this way.”

Martin led Elly out of the waiting area into the office proper. Or… was this the office? Elly wasn’t sure what she was looking at.

There were no desks or chairs. Instead, employees lounged on pillows and blankets, or sat on raised platforms, hunched over their laptops.

“Huh,” Elly said.

“Impressive, right?” Martin said. “You see, about five years ago, we brought in a firm to assess the employee experience. It turned out, most staff members were incredibly stressed. Well, our founder and CEO didn’t like that. So what did he do?”

“Allowed more work from home?” Elly said.

“Haha! No, silly! He had the office redone,” Martin explained. “The designer he chose was given one directive: make things less stressful around here. And who leads one of the least stressful, most pampered existences in the world? The modern house cat. Hence, the designer redid everything with cats’ preferences in mind. And the result is what you see in front of you.”

“It’s certainly…” Elly searched for the appropriate phrase before settling on: “a unique approach.”

“Totally!” Martin said. “And I won’t lie, it takes some getting used to. My chair, for example, is a plastic grocery bag that someone left on the floor. But you get used to it after a while, and it starts to feel totally normal to exchange gossip around the office water bowl.”

“Wait,” Elly said, “so you just dip a cup into a big bowl of stagnant water?”

Martin frowned. “Who said anything about a cup?”

“But I don’t get it,” Elly said. “Why wouldn’t you have a water fountain? I mean, my cat does. It’s cute. The water comes out of something that looks like a cloud. And that means my cat has flowing water all day, every day, which helps her stay hydrated.”

Now it was Martin’s turn to be perplexed. “Really? How strange.” Just as quickly, he recovered his poise. “But hey, this is just one floor! We haven’t even shown you the cafeteria yet! I’m hearing that lunch today is poultry pellets and tuna pâté, just like yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before–”

“Martin,” Elly said, “I’d like to withdraw my candidacy for this position.”