Chapter 41 The Fifth Floor Shuffle (Joy)
Downs stairs below Joy was Stepping onto the fifth-floor lobby, instantly felt it that curated chill in the air. Sleek glass walls. Espresso machines humming. Employees moved like designer ghosts suits sharp, posture sharper, not a hair out of place. Joy marigold jumpsuit , with her hair in a curly messy bun, and strawberry earrings stood out like a neon post it on a corporate memo .
.A few managers turned. One raised an eyebrow. Another sneered. There was a quiet chuckle she chose not to dignify.
Still, Joy walked like she owned the building. Confidence unbothered. Voice clear.
“Hi there just need quick support for the third-floor terminals. We’ve had four system crashes and a temperature swing of about thirty degrees.”
A tall woman in a beige blazer gave her a look that screamed Bless your little chaos heart. “That’s a Facilities request. Try Devon in Infrastructure.”
Joy found Devon in the tech support alcove scrolling on his phone.
“That’s not really my department anymore,” he said without looking up. “You’ll need to go through Perry. He handles overflow now.”
Perry was in a meeting. She waited fifteen minutes. When she finally got two words in, he waved her off: “Just log the request in the queue. If it’s critical, they’ll escalate.”
“Funny thing,” Joy said, still smiling, “the system we’re supposed to use to file that escalation is also broken.”
Perry shrugged. “Then you’ll have to wait.”
Three office detours, one elevator ride, and a petty microaggression marathon later Joy returned.
Lotus sat hunched over her tablet, documenting everything. Her screen froze. Again. Joy slammed the printer tray shut and flopped into the chair beside her.
“They gave me the Fifth Floor Shuffle,” she muttered. “Redirected, deflected, dismissed.”
Lotus didn’t even look up. “You make them nervous.”
“Damn right I do.”.
Three days later, the third floor still looked like a crime scene in an office documentary.
Joy and Lotus had been working nonstop sending emails to HR, Cynthia, and Maintenance—complete with photos of cracked floor tiles, dusty vents, and a printer that looked like it had seen the Cold War.
Nothing.
Not a single response.
Just polite auto-replies and one suspicious “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”
Lotus sighed, eyes locked on the frozen screen of her tablet. “We’ve filed six maintenance requests, three HR forms, and a complaint with IT.”
Joy kicked the leg of her desk. “And we’ve got nothing but passive-aggressive silence and this haunted fax machine.”
The air conditioner hissed in reply spitting out one last puff of lukewarm air before dying completely.
Then suddenly they heard a knock on their door.