I'll Be Right Back
- Dec 5, 2025
- 6 min read
by Mallory Smart
On Friday, the company schedules this “optional” team building thing called SURVIVING THE GRIND: A SLASHER-BASED APPROACH TO CORPORATE COHESION.
HR departments love acting like Buzzfeed on steroids. Pretending structure is a personality trait.
But such is life in corporate America.
(Rip.)
Like, okay Brenda, tell me more about team work and murder. This is definitely the vibe we need at 9AM.
The flickering fluorescent lights in Conference Room B always make me feel like I’m in a low budget documentary. The way they hum and the fact that there is perpetually a fly stuck in one only reinforces it.
Also, the Snake Plant in the corner is legit dead. Snake Plants don’t die. They’re the most common office plant because they tolerate low light and don’t need much watering.
You have to actively bully them into death. Which tells you everything you need to know about the working conditions at this company.
Coffee stains are fossilized into the conference table like failed projection charts.
A whiteboard from the mid–2000s is still ghosted with tally marks from whatever meltdown Q2 required.
As I look up, I notice two consultants wearing matching navy blue polos and lanyards like the twins from The Shining if those twins were deeply committed to corporate wellness culture.
They don’t blink at us as we walk in. They don’t look like they blink, period. Probably because they’re being paid more per hour than we make per week, and nothing says “late-stage capitalism” like outsourcing a slasher workshop because HR is afraid of confrontation. The consultants have that weird corporate calm that makes you feel like you’re the unhinged one. I keep thinking: if I faded away right now, they’d probably mark it on a Google Form and call it performance calibration.
They clutch their clipboards the way most people clutch their iPhones. Tight and anxiously.
There’s coffee by the dead Snake Plant that smells like microwaved Starbucks. Burnt cardboard and “case of the Mondays” vibes.
One of the consultants clears their throat and says: WELCOME TO YOUR SURVIVOR ROLES.
That’s it. No follow up.
The polo twins just proceed to hand out lanyards to everyone like it’s Halloween.
The intern who still goes to night school gets Final Girl and beams like she’s been promoted to something other than burnout.
A 21st century Woody Guthrie song in the making.
She’s smart and self-aware and dresses like she’s permanently one playlist away from an emotional revelation. I can only assume the consultants stalked her social media.
(They absolutely did.)
I suspect they’ve been checking up on us for sometime, so it wouldn’t. surprise me.
Bro from sales claims The Jock / Homecoming King archetype and flexes like he’s auditioning for a protein shake commercial. He wears a fitness tracker and is the type who yells “Let’s dooo this!” to psych himself up before a cold call.
IT gets Rules Guy and says “of course” in the tone of someone who’s been typecast since middle school. Self-aware and savvy.
Accounting gets Comedic Relief, which is ironic because she hasn’t smiled since the last “team building” exercise and keeps her camera off during Zoom calls.
The manager gets Inept Authority Figure, because authority is the only thing he cosplays. I can’t decide whether he got this because he’s incompetent or just never seems to “get it” when we talk to him.
The new hire gets Disposable Adult, HR shorthand for “we never cared about you enough to actually know you.”
One lanyard left.
THE ONE WHO SAYS ‘I’LL BE RIGHT BACK.’
(Big yikes.)
The quiet verdict is that women always get this part. Not the complex, surviving role, but the necessary setup. The low-value initiative that creates space for the hero’s arc.
The necessary precursor to someone else’s development.
Cool cool cool.
The consultants dim the lights like this is immersive theater and not HR’s latest cry for help.
Act One, one of them says. Someone hears a noise. Who investigates?
Everyone looks at me immediately.
Sales says it’s literally my role.
Like really, Chad?
IT says narrative stability matters. Someone has to die so the stakes feel earned.
Final Girl avoids eye contact.
(It was a mood.)
The consultant looks like they want to file a complaint against me personally. Pulls out their iPhone with a fake “winning” smile and says I should do it for the ‘gram.
Everyone glowed up.
They hand me a flickering flashlight bought with leftover petty cash they had from the holiday party.
The hallway smells like burnt microwave popcorn, which means someone cried in the breakroom and hoped the smell covered it.
I come back into the room ten seconds later.
They scream. Not in fear. In annoyance.
“Why are you back?”
Comic Relief had already declared me dead.
“You’re not supposed to come back.”
“You’re breaking the story.”
“You’re high key ruining the pacing.”
Final Girl gives me this disappointed head-tilt that says, “Girl, be serious.”
Someone opens a Google Form called Hallway Incident Report — Correction Needed and checks a box that says Status: Returned (Incorrect).
The Jock had barricaded the door.
Accounting crawled under the table and honestly? Big mood.
Prankster kept jump-scaring people until HR said jump scares violated company values.
And I couldn’t follow the plot.
“You’re not SUPPOSED to come back,” IT snaps, clutching his water bottle like a talisman.
The consultant looks at me the way people look at potholes. Frustrated but resigned.
A stapler falls and everyone panics.
Disposable Adult holds a marker like a Deputy Dewey with a flashlight.
Rules Guy draws survival corridors on the whiteboard. Reminds everyone bathrooms are statistically the first kill zone.
Someone had quietly moved my Cattitude coffee mug to the communal cabinet.
Like they’re already reallocating assets.
(Honestly insulting.)
Act Two, the consultant announces.
Final Girl steps forward to give her speech and looks at me like, sorry babe. Plot demands blood.
Half apology, half relief.
A sigh that says: I’m not choosing this. The story is. Also I want my promotion and I don’t care who I have to step over to get it.
She launches into a monologue about teamwork and sacrifice like she’s been rehearsing it her whole life.
We need a meaningful loss for Act Two, the polo wearing consultant coaches like a stage mom.
Sales goes, “Yeah, because Act One already had its First Kill.”
I’m like, “I’m sorry, WHO died?”
IT shows me his phone, scrolling through the morning check-in.
“Denise from Accounts Payable selected ‘Deceased’ on the Google Form at 8:13 AM.”
Accounting nods.
“It auto-updates across the system. So… you know. Dead.”
The consultant CLAPS.
Claps like Denise heroically died for art.
A woman accidentally clicked a box in a Google Form and everyone shrugs like that’s the natural order of things.
Sales turned Jock says, “That means you have to die next. Don’t fumble. Take one for the team. It’s literally your job.”
(Bro understood the assignment.)
IT says I messed up the story by returning in the first place.
I agree.
Final Girl whispers it’s nothing personal. It’s just slasher movie tradition.
Tradition is just a polite way of saying women were volunteered before anyone asked.
I walk toward the door.
“Sell it,” the consultant says, like sincerity is a performance metric.
Stu Macher echoes in my head, mocking and sing-song: I’ll be right baaaack…
But mine comes out flat.
Not a joke.
Just tired.
“I’ll be right back.”
Before the door finishes swinging shut, someone writes: DECEASED — OFFICIAL next to my name.
The hallway hums.
The HVAC coughs like Judy in Twin Peaks: The Return.
That burnt-popcorn smell is still there. Whoever melted that bag earlier must’ve been having a day.
I respect the chaos of it.
I pass by the cubicles and everyone’s in that weird mid-Friday trance.
One guy has AirPods in but they’re not even connected. He’s just hiding from reality.
(Honestly relatable.)
A motivational poster is peeling off the wall like it’s trying to escape and somebody’s FunkoPop stares at me with that “you’re the drama” energy.
The last Snake Plant pretending it’s fine.
Behind me: “Is she coming back?”
“Gag, I hope not.”
“She already chopped the narrative once.”
“Cringe.”
No one checks on me. No one asks if I’m okay.
Someone says remove her from Google Calendar.
Someone else says they already did.
“Cool.”
“She’s cooked.”
(It’s giving middle-school cafeteria energy.)
And they all hum in agreement like a church choir of passive-aggressive psychos.
That’s the vibe.
I’m never coming back.
Not for the story. Not for the ‘gram. Not even for the free granola bars that corporate thinks count as a benefit.
Late-stage capitalism loves assigning women roles that end in disappearance, which… yeah. Checks out.
So I leave. No drama. No finale.
Just gone…
Mallory Smart is a Chicago-based writer who loves keeping it weird. She’s the author of I Keep My Visions to Myself and The Only Living Girl in Chicago, the host of the podcast Textual Healing, and Editor-in-Chief of Maudlin House, an indie press for restless, unapologetic voices. Her work shows up where you least expect it and lingers longer than it should.
