Tuesday morning, somebody had already moved my ceramic coffee mug.
It sat on the corner of the reception counter beside Erin’s purse and a little container of vanilla creamer pods she’d brought from home. My mug still had the faded blue snowflakes my daughter painted on it years ago at one of those pottery places in the mall.
I almost picked it up, then stopped because Erin was standing nearby answering phones.
She smiled when she saw me looking at it. “Karen said reception gets cold in the mornings, so she told me to use whatever was already here.”
I said, “Of course,” before realizing she thought the mug belonged to the office.
The strange part was that I still made coffee for everyone like I always did. I filled the machine with water, wiped powdered sugar off the counter, restocked sweetener packets from the supply closet. My hands knew where everything went even while I stood there feeling unnecessary.
Around ten, one of the plumbers leaned through dispatch and asked Erin if “Linda still handles the vendor screwups.”
Still.
Not “you.”
Not “Mrs. Donnelly.”
Just Linda. Like I was still technically there but already becoming inconvenient to route around.
Erin looked toward me before answering. “I think Karen wants me learning that stuff now.”
Nobody corrected her.
Later that afternoon, I noticed my extension no longer appeared on the printed call sheet taped near reception. At first I assumed the page had been cut off crooked because the copier always shifted left on heavier paper.
Then I saw Erin’s name typed beneath Karen’s.
Mine wasn’t there at all.
I folded the paper once and slipped it under a stack of invoices before anyone else could see me staring at it.
The phones kept ringing. Someone in the warehouse was arguing about pipe fittings. Karen laughed loudly inside her office with the door half open while Erin sat at reception using the nickname only the older employees used for me.
“Lin said we keep extra contracts in the gray cabinet,” she told a customer on the phone casually, like the name already belonged to office history instead of a person still sitting twenty feet away.
At lunch, I opened the refrigerator and found my yogurt shoved behind three meal-prep containers with Erin’s name written in neat black marker across blue tape.
Someone had thrown out my spoon from the drawer because a plastic one sat in its place now.
I ate standing up at the counter because Erin was using my usual chair in the break room while Karen showed her how payroll shortcuts worked on the computer.
Karen pointed at the screen and said, “You’ll get used to doing it her way at first, then eventually you’ll develop your own system.”
Neither of them lowered their voices when I walked in.
I stood there holding the yogurt cup long after I finished eating it because for a few seconds I honestly couldn’t remember whether I was supposed to wash the spoon or throw it away.