Untold Work Story
A fun trip. Until his phone buzzed at 7 PM
“We’re restructuring the team. Your role has been identified as redundant, effective immediately. Please return your laptop and access card to the office within 5 working days.”
Rohan read it twice before his brain let the words mean anything.
He was sitting on a cane chair on a hotel balcony, hill air, string lights, three of his oldest friends laughing about something from Class 10. His phone had buzzed once, quietly, under the sound of everyone else’s noise.
He had done everything right. School, good grades, no drama. College, the right internships. The job, four years of being the one who delivered without being asked twice. He had just gotten engaged, three months ago, to the person he’d been in love with since nineteen. If anyone was going to be fine, it was supposed to be him.
“Oi, Rohan, your turn,” someone called. A card game. A joke waiting on him.
He put the phone face down on the armrest and said something that got a laugh. He doesn’t remember what.
The rest of the evening happened the way evenings happen. Dinner, more cards, someone’s terrible singing. Rohan laughed in the right places. He even ordered another round.
Nobody at that table had ever seen him not have it together. Not once, not in fifteen years of knowing him. He wasn’t about to let a cost cutting email be the first time.
He kept checking his phone anyway. Not for news, there wasn’t going to be any more news tonight. Just checking, the way you touch a bruise to see if it still hurts.
By midnight, everyone had gone to their rooms. Rohan lay awake doing the math. Notice period. Savings. What he’d tell his fiancée, and when, and how. What he’d tell these four people who thought he was the one who always landed on his feet.
He decided, somewhere around 2 AM, that he wouldn’t tell them. Not this trip. Maybe not for a while.
The rest of the weekend went exactly the way it was supposed to. Treks, breakfast arguments about where to eat, a late night bonfire. Rohan was fully present for all of it, present enough that nobody asked him a single question.
He got back to his apartment on Sunday night. Two rooms, nicely done up, the kind of place that photographs well. He’d signed the lease six months ago, proud of it, proud of himself.
He set his bag down. Took out his laptop to charge it, out of habit, before remembering he had five days left to hand it back.
That was the moment.
Not the email. Not the card game. A charging cable, halfway to a socket, in an apartment nobody else had seen him in all weekend.
He sat down on the floor, right there, and didn’t get up for a while.
Why me, he kept thinking.
I’ve been doing everything right. School, college, the job, all of it.
So why me?
He didn’t have an answer that night.
Maybe someday he’d tell his friends, maybe someday it wouldn’t feel like something to hide. But as of today, Rohan didn’t want them to know.
Watch Rohan’s Untold Work Story
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