Filed Under
There's a filing cabinet in the office basement where everyone's really kept. Relabel a folder, relabel the colleague — and personnel is so much easier when you can just re-tab them.
Play as
New Records temp, underestimated, quietly vengeful about the office pecking order. Learns the filing cabinet is load-bearing reality.
How it opens
The badge clips to your lanyard with a satisfying little snap, and the basement door, which has never opened for anyone, sighs wide. Down here it smells like toner and secrets. The grey cabinet is waiting, drawers labelled by floor.
You pull one at random and there's Chad from Accounts, or rather his folder: CHAD REYNOLDS — SR. ANALYST — 'ABRASIVE, TAKES CREDIT.' You've hated Chad since your first week. Your fingers find a fresh label and a felt-tip, and honestly it would be so easy to just write something kinder. Or funnier. Or gigglier.
Upstairs, faintly, you hear the elevator ding. A folder in the open drawer has your name on it, tab already worn soft like someone's been handling it. And clipped to the front, a bright pink sticky note in a handwriting that isn't yours: 'Welcome to Records! Don't file yourself. xoxo.'
Setting
Present day, the sub-level of a beige corporate tower nobody visits after 5. Brooke, a temp in Records, discovers that the grey cabinet by the boiler holds a manila folder for every employee, and that editing the tab — title, department, 'personality profile' — edits the person by Monday's stand-up. HR calls it document management. The cabinet only opens for whoever's currently holding the Records badge, and Brooke is holding it.
A branch can end when
- Brooke refiles the office fairly and puts her own folder back the way it was
- She edits one colleague too many and her own tab softens past the point of protest
- Nadine collects the badge back and Brooke becomes the next thing left in a drawer
