To whom it may concern (girlxgirl)

A Bizarre Office and A Not So Forgotten Secret

Don't people who say that we live in a simulation realize that we were the ones who created the concept of a simulation? Do they really believe that we have the capacity and the intelligence to explain how we exist? Our man-made subjective and culturally biased language can't possibly describe our existence, can it? I should ask Samantha; she'd have the perfect answer to this. I blushed to myself at the thought of Sam.
"Nicole?"
"NICOLE!" Joel screamed while snapping his fingers and staring at me with those large brown eyes and thick arched eyebrows to wake me up after my mind had wandered elsewhere.
"Yes, yes. What is it?" I looked around at the lunchroom hoping no one had seen me drift away and blankly stare out the window.
"You were dreaming again! Come on finish your lunch so that we can go to the meeting early without having to hear him complaining about us being late again" He said in a rush.
Joel was the friendly type, and he was one of the more normal colleagues I had here at the office. He was referring to our boss who had an obsession with scheduled meetings and hated when someone was late. Unfortunately, Joel happens to be a guy who's very bad with time management, but he makes up for it by being good at his job as a content editor and videographer. He was originally from Dubai and had worked in America for 7 years before settling here in Sweden 3 years ago to work here at the multinational media bureau Qwence.
"My lunch has gotten cold now, and I wasn't planning on finishing it anyway. Let's go." I said as I moved towards the trashcan to scrape off the last pieces off. I turned to the dishwasher with my lunchbox carefully placing it inside hoping I don't get any leavings on my hands from the other plates.
"Where is Sam? Isn't she joining us?" I asked hoping he'd say yes because I knew she'd make this meeting bearable with her fresh attitude and humor not to mention her gorgeous looks. I'd much rather stare at her face than a whiteboard.
"No she got held up with something, you know she's usually super busy after lunch. I don't even think she had time to eat" he replied.
"Oh, okay" I said slightly disappointed with his answer while walking towards the meeting room with him.

We usually held this meeting every Monday morning to discuss our plans for the upcoming week and catch up on updates from the week prior. However, today some people were busy early in the morning, so we postponed it to after lunch. When we entered the meeting room our coworker Beth, a clumsy blonde tall American, was connecting the computer to the TV screen.
"Hey" Joel and I said simultaneously.
"Hi guys, Marry, Eve and a few others are joining us virtually! Have a seat I'm almost done setting this up!" Beth shouted loudly trying to make her voice heard from behind the screen as she plugged in the cables. The room was spacious but not too big and we would've heard her clearly if she hadn't shouted, but that's Beth. She's loud and she thinks her loudness compensates for her incompetence. But what's the point of saying things loudly if what you're saying is of no greater importance? Beth works with photography, graphic design, IT, fixing our broken things like printers and once I heard her say that she had filled in for one of our accountants for 3 months. Which made me question the company's professionalism but also whether or not she actually had done that. She does everything and nothing at the same time and I'm unsure of her title. I know that she works here, I just never seem to figure out what she actually does and no one else seems to know either, not even Sam. She doesn't seem like the cleverest employee and she has odd habits like randomly appearing and disappearing in places, but she's clearly clever enough to fool the board members and somehow keep the job. Beth sat on a different floor but she was always doing random tasks here on ours.

We sat down and prepared ourselves. Soon our boss Benjamin, joined Joel, Beth, and me, and faces started showing up one by one on the screen as every member of the team joined the call. I didn't look forward to the meeting and I remembered the first meeting I attended when I started working at Qwence two and a half years ago. That meeting was on my first day and I was so shocked over how silent and shy all the employees were. Everyone was so tense and almost afraid to speak without getting an angry nod from our boss Benjamin. He was very strict and serious, but not methodological whatsoever, which meant that he followed his gut feeling rather than a strategic and rational plan, and let me tell you his intuition is not his strong suit. Back then I realized the strong hierarchy in the company as soon as our boss Benjamin started speaking. He was very stern but vague in his speech, he spoke generally about everything which ended with everyone being lost, classic business men. He said something back then when describing the work process of a project we were working on that stuck with me. "There will be no democracy in the decision-making this time." Which made me understand that democracy was often neglected and in the absence of democracy, there was tyranny. Clearly, if I was an instinctual individual, I would've packed my bags and ran out to avoid the obvious headache that was coming from this work environment. But I stayed because the pay was good for a young project manager and frankly, I was unsure whether or not I'd be hired by someone else as I was a fresh university graduate with no experience.