Statistically, the most common days of the week to be fired are Monday or Friday. Which partly explains why, when I get to work—­today, a Wednesday—­and my keycard has been deactivated, I am very fucking surprised.

“Oof,” I say, when instead of gliding through the plexiglass barrier, I bounce right off it. The man behind me, too, is surprised, when he goes careening into my back. The security gates are meant to be a neat assembly line, not a five-­car pileup.

I fumble, trying to swipe my card again, but by now I’m flustered—­I’ve just made full-­body contact with a middle-­aged man in a charcoal suit.

“Go,” he orders, slamming his fob down over the sensor, granting me the access I couldn’t grant myself. I’m flushed with embarrassment, my brain frozen on the moment I felt his kneecap make contact with the back of my thigh.

Behind me, the barrier alarms go off again. Another person has been denied, and when I turn, I realize I know this person. It’s Suzy, the copywriter behind the company’s now infamous tagline: Tick your to-­do list off one Taskio at a time.

The pull and release of awareness is like an elastic band snapping against my skin. The faulty keycards aren’t a coincidence. They’re a ghosting.

I watch in horror while a security guard steers her away, and then I can’t move fast enough. I’m clawing around the bottom of my tote bag, flicking aside dozens of crumpled receipts until I fish my phone out from the debris. It’s vibrating in a short, insistent staccato before I even unlock the screen.

When I do, it’s covered in notifications, each little snippet forming a picture of what’s transpired in the time since I last checked it. Chief among them is a mandatory meeting invite staring at me in all caps, scheduled with HR at 8:30 a.m., and long since missed. Which begs the question: can I truly lose my job if no one can get hold of me?