The entire office went silent, the kind of heavy, awkward silence that happens when a car alarm finally stops blaring. All eyes were on me, standing by my desk with my coat still on, and on Hal, whose face was a blotchy, furious red. He wasn’t just angry; he was performing.

“This is the third time this month!” he bellowed, his voice echoing in the open-plan space. I could see Cheryl peeking over her monitor with a smug little smile. “I don’t care what your excuse is. This is a business, not a hobby! We have standards here!”

He was right. I was late. What he didn’t know, and never bothered to ask, was that I’d been remotely logged in until 3 a.m. fixing a catastrophic failure in the Norland migration—the same project he was going to present to the client in less than an hour. The system he relied on, the one that tracked my 9:18 a.m. arrival, was only functioning because I had spent half the night rebuilding it from the brink of collapse.

I simply looked at him, my expression blank. My exhaustion was a wall he couldn’t breach.

My silence only seemed to fuel his rage. He took a deep breath, puffing out his chest, and delivered the line he’d clearly been rehearsing. “You’re fired!” he screamed, jabbing a finger in my direction for dramatic effect. “In front of everyone! Pack your things and get out!”

A few people gasped. Others quickly looked down at their keyboards, pretending to be intensely busy. Hal stood there, panting slightly, expecting me to argue, to plead, to break down.

Instead, a slow, genuine smile spread across my face. It was a smile of pure, unadulterated relief. The tension that had lived in my shoulders for three years simply vanished. The confusion that washed over Hal’s face was priceless.

I smiled, packed my things, and left. I didn’t take the binders of documentation I’d written or the troubleshooting guides I’d created on my own time. I just took my favorite coffee mug, a small photo of my dad, and my worn-out headphones. As I walked towards the exit, past the rows of stunned faces, I didn’t feel a single ounce of regret.

They thought they had just won. They had no idea the clock was now ticking on the chaos I was leaving behind…
Don’t stop here

By 10:12 a.m., I was sitting in the café across the street, watching through the glass as my now-former coworkers scurried around like ants whose hill had just been kicked.

I stirred my coffee slowly. I knew exactly what was about to happen.

The Norland migration wasn’t just another project—it was the company’s entire backbone. Without my scripts, my documentation, my patchwork of fragile fixes, that entire system would eat itself alive in under an hour.

At 10:24, my phone buzzed. Cheryl. Decline.

At 10:32, another buzz. Hal this time. Decline.

At 10:41, another call. Then another. Then six more, in quick succession. The last one came from the company’s main line. I let it ring, took a slow sip, and finally answered.

“Hello?”

The sound of panic was instant. “Alex, listen—we have a major issue. The client presentation’s in nineteen minutes, and the Norland dashboard is completely unresponsive. The entire system’s down. It’s—”

I let the silence stretch until I could practically hear his heart thudding through the phone.

“Hal,” I said evenly, “you might want to check the recovery documentation. It’s in the internal drive—oh wait. That was on my personal folder, wasn’t it?”

He didn’t answer.

“Look,” he said finally, his voice tight. “We got off on the wrong foot this morning. If you can come back, just for today, I’ll—well, we’ll talk about reinstating your position. A raise, maybe.”

I smiled. “I’m sorry, Hal. I’ve already got an offer.”

That part wasn’t a lie. By 10:00 last night, while babysitting his failing system, I’d accepted a position at Norland itself. The client. The company he was supposed to impress this morning.

At 10:45 a.m., while Hal was still babbling about reconsiderations and apologies, I stood up, tossed a tip on the table, and stepped out into the sunlight.

“Alex, please,” he said, desperation cracking his voice.

“Hal,” I interrupted softly, “you should probably reboot the server before the client logs in.”

Click.

When I arrived at Norland’s offices later that week, I was escorted into the boardroom to meet the executive team. Hal was already there—sweating, pale, mid-presentation, trying to explain why his company had failed to deliver the system. His eyes widened when he saw me walk in, badge swinging from my neck with Norland’s logo printed in bold blue.

“Good morning,” I said brightly, taking a seat across from him. “Shall we begin?”

The look on his face was worth every sleepless night I’d ever spent fixing his mistakes.