Victory tastes sweet.
​And vindictive. But mostly sweet.

Dear fellow world savers

It is a beautiful day. The sun is shining. The phone is ringing. And I am so incredibly tired of answering it.

The last time I did, I got screamed at for daring to say 'Hello'. Apparently that was very aggressive of me. Yeah, I'm done talking to people for the day. Too bad that my shift won't be over for another four hours.

Tessa is amazing but I get why the help desk has one of the highest turnover rates in this company. Even a great boss can only do so much when the work itself sucks.

How has your week been?

I hope you've had a good one. Even if you don't, I hope you had at least one truly great moment that brightens up all the other days around it.

I don't think I realized just how much moments like that carry me through the boredom and small annoyances of every day life until last Wednesday when the universe threw me a lifeline.

Speaking of.

🥸 Did you forget about the Lunch Thief?

After all, I haven't mentioned them in my last emails. And it's not like they have taken your lunch, did they? So it's not personal to you, no matter what Yenna claims about being invested.

Or perhaps you simply thought I forgot.

That with everything else going on—getting sick, filling in at the help desk, organizing our first official back-off—it would slip my mind. Especially when I gave you no reason to believe otherwise.

Well my naive fellow world saver, let me assure you: that was my plan all along.

To make you forget. To distract you with other important—if not necessarily more important—issues and let the shine of the personal drama wear off. To let time do what it does best when it works as it should: to make you relax.

And when it comes to a certain unnamed lunch thief: to lull you into a false sense of security.

(There is also the fact that Yenna took me aside a couple of weeks ago and suggested that my search might go better if I didn't report on my own movements and plans in a company-wide newsletter.

Turns out she had a point. Thanks Yenna!)

Because of my continued stint at the help desk, my schedule has reached a new level of unpredictability. It's a serious inconvenience when it comes to things like having a decent night's sleep, partaking in any sort of social life and making friends with the ever-changing roster of my colleagues.

However it does have one benefit: no one—not even I myself—knows when I am eating lunch.

(Tessa might, actually. There is a reason she is the undisputed supreme overlord. But shhh, you didn't hear that from me.)

And so after weeks—WEEKS!!!—of confusion, uncertainty and too many lost lunches, I have finally caught the trice cursed lunch thief in the act.

By accident.

Not that it matters. Caught is caught.

So what if I was so tired I almost believed the bastard when they claimed that it was their lunch, even though my name was clearly written on top of the box? Five times?

It still counts.

The real surprise is that it was not Cashew. I mean, he has sworn on some guy's—whose name I didn't recognize—grave that he hadn't touched my meals but his face kept doing that weird thing that isn't really a smile because it looks way too condescending, so I didn't believe him.

@Shane: before you call me paranoid, take a long, hard look in the nearest mirror. Also be aware that Cashew might have technically been innocent but I wasn't totally off-base. Because he knew who the thief was this whole time and actively covered for them.

Yeah, them.

Apologies to anyone who has gotten invested in my personal vendetta—against your better judgment, no doubt—because I am about to do the cruelest thing possible: deny you the relief of a resolution.

That's right, me and Lunch Thief* have made a deal.

I keep their name to myself (which leads me to believe that I'm not their first victim, but well, sorry not sorry I guess?) and in return they owe me a favor for every lunch they stole from me.

It's a pretty good deal.

Though probably not as great as the ones Legal arranges all the time. I mean how did they get the Libra Squad off the hook for breaking an entire shopping mall without mind-controlling every officer involved in the mess?

They must be half-sirens. At least.

Whatever, I'm pretty happy with my own attempt at semi-hostile negotiation. All those training modules really come in handy at the strangest of times.

Did I "waste" my first favor to ensure that all my future meals are safe?

Of course I did. Whom do you take me for? Lunch Thief* may be a known variable instead of an unknown one now but it took me all of 7 minutes talking to them to realize that they are an unapologetic troublemaker.

Also Cashew gave me a small nod when I did that. The sharp, respectful kind that told me I have read Lunch Thief* exactly right.

(Cashew, true to form, has been no help during my encounter with Lunch Thief*. At all.)

As for the rest?

No clue what to do with them. But if working here with all of you—and IT especially—has taught me anything it is that you can never be owed too many favors.

...

Hey, do you think telling Lunch Thief* to shut down PR's newest stupid campaign idea would be taking things too far?

*Name anonymized to protect the identity of the person involved.

🧠Business Update: Moving along. I guess.

Let's start with the good news:

1. The suspiciously glowy buildings on the South end of Anchor Point are still standing. They are also still glowing. I assume that these are good news, since nothing has changed for the worst even though we are overdue another 'incident of not entirely irrelevant radioactivity'.
   Fingers crossed that things stay this way.
2. On a hopefully unrelated note, Acheron has been seen near the old bridge. You know, the really old one that was supposed to be repaired 4 years ago and has been shut down because of public safety concerns instead after said repair got delayed, delayed, delayed and then delayed again.
   Supposedly Acheron, unofficial official leader of the Argos, hasn't done anything except walk past it.
   The old bridge is still in the exact same unstable condition, so Acheron's presence might not mean anything. Though I hear some of the nearby businesses have had the foresight to invest in better insurance coverage. Just in case.

While maybe not as exciting as usual, Acheron's reappearance in the public eye indicates that our local supervillain elite is alive and well. And probably plotting.

All is as it should be.

It also means that we can set our internal countdown since the last official sighting of an Argos back to zero.

May this knowledge brighten up your day because I also have some less encouraging updates to share.

The bad news are:

1. Things within Finances are tense. I'm no analytical mastermind but I predict it is only going to get worse. Why? Because the first quarter is drawing to a close and rumor has it that our expenditures exceed the projected budget by a very significant amount.
   ​If you work in Finances: the next two and a half weeks are going to suck. I'm sorry but I can't sugarcoat it. The only bright side: you can count the days until you can make your misery everyone else's problem.
   ​If you don't work in Finances: you are fine for now. However, once the Q1 numbers are official and we move into adjusting the Q2 plan, every department will be under pressure. Enjoy the peace while it lasts.
2. The quirky coffee shop operated by our friendly neighborhood supervillains is officially under investigation. Building Security has made their stance clear: until proven otherwise the coffee is assumed to be drugged, since it is simply "too good to be true". Employees are forbidden from working within 48 hours of having consumed a villain-sourced coffee. Or any other drink offered by the charming little store next door.
   If this travesty of a "display of reasonable caution" doesn't inspire a mutiny, I don't know what will.
3. Half of the PR department has already signed up for the bake-off. Everyone, I need you to get off your lazy butts and show some initiative. The more people participate from a single department, the higher the chances that one of them wins.
   While I am, of course, completely objective about this, I cannot in good conscience stand by and let PR get the honor and assorted bragging rights of winning the first company-wide competition since the Bike to Work Disaster of 2023 just because everyone else has been too busy saving the city and giving themselves headaches trying to figure out this year's budgeting decisions. So if you haven't signed up yet, do it now. I'm counting on you.

HR would like you to know that it's time 🧼

This morning around 8:30 HR has asked me to remind you all that spring cleaning is more than a personal choice in your personal time.

The trend applies to your workspace as well.

Be honest: when was the last time you wiped down your screen? Can you even look at the keyboard in direct sunlight without shuddering? And what about all those half-eaten snacks slowly growing into a new microorganism in the cupboard on the third floor?

At this point we may either wait for it to develop its own intelligence or turn into a mutated, entirely new office plant. As HR only appreciates dead office plants, neither option is likely to impress them.

So stop wasting your time with pre- and post-meeting small talk and focus on the real task: clean your desk.

Facility Management will thank you. So will your desk neighbor.

📞 Additional note to working at the Supervillain Hotline

Supervillains are crazy.

I realize that this may not be a groundbreaking realization, but I don't think I have appreciated the full meaning of this simple fact of life for a long time. Or ever.

Two days ago, I received what has to be the weirdest call I have gotten on the help desk. And I've had some very weird calls.

(I used to think people exaggerate in these stories. Clearly the universe is trying to tell me something. As in beat me over the head with a conclusion.

Well.

Message received, universe. Message received.)

Here's what happened: Alexander called me. Not some random guy named Alexander. I'm talking about the supervillain who fashions himself the next Alexander the Great.

The misleading name meant it took a couple of seconds for me to realize that I was talking to a real supervillain. (I mean, Alexander is ranked #14 on the Most Wanted Supervillain List, so it's not like he is a nobody.) But that wasn't the weird part.

The weird part was that he called to complain about XERXES' threat response time.

He literally said and I quote: "I shut down the Eastern tunnel out of the city thirty-two minutes ago. Your Deescalation Squad still hasn't shown up. This is a disgrace. I'm a number two priority threat at minimum. There's a school bus full of screaming children here."

I asked him if any of the children were hurt or in danger. He corrected me, explaining that they had been screaming in fear for the first ten minutes and had since gotten distracted by an argument about which supervillain is the coolest because "children have the attention span of a concussed goldfish and their supervisors are clearly useless".

Alexander did not appear to care that he didn't make the cut in the whole best-supervillain-debate.

He did however care very much about the lacking reliability and engagement XERXES was apparently displaying by doing him the discourtesy of not showing up and made sure to let me know it. In detail.

I found out later that he had also blocked cell service when he shut down the entire tunnel, which is why we didn't know there was a problem. R&D is on the case.

Still.

I can't believe I had to argue with a supervillain about why none of our squads were trying to arrest him yet. Worse, he left me a 1-star rating afterwards which ruined my previously excellent 4.7 rating. All because he was angry at XERXES, not because of anything I did.

Alexander better hope he doesn't get arrested any time soon. He made it personal.

Until next week, remember: it is still March. We aren't even half-way through the month yet.

If you don't know what that means, I see another mandatory retraining in your future. You obviously need it.

Your no longer third-best-ranked temporary third-tier help desk operative
​Jo