▸ Column · Modern Gotham — a forty-person corporate department, told to the city's resident cat burglar
CATWOMAN replies.
The letter
Somehow I became the office's designated birthday-collection person. Eighteen months ago I started Slack-pinging all forty people in our department for $5 every couple of weeks toward cards and gift cards, and now I dread the Thursday our admin, Priya, drops the new birthday list in my inbox — that's the hour I spend hunting down the people who "never saw the message." I floated rotating the job. My manager, Derek, said he loved my initiative but that I'm "just so good at it" and he'd hate to break a working system. I'm out almost $200 in gift pools for coworkers I've maybe spoken to twice, and I honestly can't tell if I'm being quietly used or if this is simply what offices are. Either way — how do I quit without becoming the villain who killed everyone's birthday?
Catwoman replies
Sugar, let's find the key before we pick the lock. It isn't Priya and it certainly isn't the birthday boys you've met twice. It's Derek. "You're so good at it" — listen to that. That's not a compliment, that's a leash with a bow on it. He's not keeping a system, he's keeping a free clerk who pays out of her own pocket and thanks him for the privilege. Eighteen months. Two hundred dollars. You've been robbed slower than anything I've ever pulled, and that takes real patience on his part.
Here's the part you're getting wrong: you asked his permission to stop. Permission is just a lock somebody else is holding the key to, and he is never, ever handing it over. So don't ask. After this round, you put the list down. Tell Priya, sweetly, that the pool keeps going the second someone else picks it up — and then let it sit there. The birthdays survive. People always find five bucks when the alternative is doing it themselves.
You're not ruining anyone's party. You're just declining, finally, to be the getaway car. I don't apologize for that and neither should you.
— Catwoman
Batman weighs in
She's right that Derek used you. She's wrong about the exit. Drop the list cold and a gap opens — gaps fill with resentment, and it lands back on you by the next quarter. Selina walks out of rooms. She never has to keep working in them.
Do it properly. Before you stop, write the system down. The schedule. The pool. Three people who can run it. Hand Derek the document and the names in front of witnesses. Then it cannot return to you — you've made yourself unnecessary, not absent.
Disappearing is easy. Engineering it so it stays gone is the work. Prepare it. Then you're free.
— Batman
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