I fired the only person who knew how to keep our office running, then spent six days discovering how much I didn't know. My name is Elian Rook, and until that Monday, I believed I was a good employee. I arrived early. I answered emails. I remembered birthdays. I even participated in the office tradition of leaving a slice of cake in the fridge for whoever had the least work to do that afternoon. The tradition had existed for fourteen years at Bellweather Engineering. Whoever finished their tasks first was supposed to leave a cake slice for the colleague who had the most difficult assignment. It was meant to be kind. Then our newest employee, Nessa, discovered that nobody had left her cake. She was the only person in the department working on a complicated accessibility redesign. She'd spent three weeks correcting problems the previous team had ignored. While everyone else celebrated finishing their projects, she stayed late and ate lunch at her desk. On Friday, she found an empty cake box with her name written on it. Someone had eaten the slice before she arrived. I laughed when she complained. Not cruelly, I thought. Just enough to make the situation seem smaller. “It's only cake,” I said. Nessa looked at me for a long moment. “That's what people say when they're not the ones being excluded.” On Monday, she didn't come to work. .....