The Stapler and the Singer

By the time the chicken-and-pepper tacos were gone, Priya still couldn’t shake the strange, sharp memory of the day before at work.

She and her colleagues rarely ventured into politics or religion in the office. It was the sort of place where people preferred weather, weekend plans, and who had brought the best pastries. So when her coworker Denise, who had a habit of turning every conversation into a crisis, asked what Priya thought about the latest scandal involving a famous singer, Priya tried to keep her answer as harmless as possible.

“I don’t really want to get into it,” she had said. Then, after a beat, “It seems like he really stepped in it.”

She had meant it neutrally. Mildly. Almost evasively.

Denise’s face changed at once.

“You think you’re so much better?” she snapped, her voice rising so fast that several people nearby looked up from their screens.

Priya froze. She didn’t know how a comment that soft had turned into a match striking against dry grass. She tried to back out of it gracefully. “I’m just going to walk away now,” she said, and turned toward the door.

She never saw the stapler coming.

It slammed against the doorframe beside her with a hard metallic crack. For a second, Priya couldn’t even process what had happened. Then she looked back and saw the stapler on the floor, glinting under the fluorescent lights like some absurd office weapon.

Denise had thrown it at her.

Priya picked it up in silence, carried it back to Denise’s desk, and set it down without a word. Then she walked straight to human resources.

By the time they were all in the same room, the story had already spread. The HR manager tried to keep the meeting calm, but Denise came in furious and humiliated, as though she had been the one attacked. She cursed at Priya. She cursed at the HR manager. Then she stormed out.

Priya spent the rest of the afternoon wondering whether the whole thing had actually happened, or whether office life had finally become too strange to trust.

The next morning, Denise arrived late and avoided everyone’s eyes. Something about her silence made the entire floor feel colder. She was summoned back into HR before she had fully settled at her desk. Through the half-closed door, people heard voices rise again.

When Denise emerged, she was angry and crying, already packing her things into a box.

Priya’s work friend, Soren, glanced over and said in a bright, almost cheerful voice, “Don’t forget your stapler.”

A couple of people bit back laughter. Priya almost did too.

By the end of the day, Denise had been dismissed. If she returned, security would escort her off the premises. No one said it aloud, but everyone seemed to be thinking the same thing: whatever devotion Denise had for that singer, it had not been worth a stapler, a suspension, or a job.

Priya sat at her desk that evening, exhausted, and wondered if she should start wearing a helmet to work.

The tacos had been good, at least.