He got a free trip to Hawaii for nearly killing our department.
One week after Gary Thorne dragged his mucus-dripping self through our office like a human biohazard, half the team was sick, deadlines were in free fall, and I was curled up on my couch with a fever and a laptop, trying to save the biggest account our company had ever pitched.
The man didn’t just ignore every common sense protocol — he weaponized his illness as some twisted badge of honor, then vanished the moment the damage was done, leaving the rest of us to clean up the wreckage.
By the time I rebuilt his half-baked data and presented the client pitch while coughing through a Zoom call, I was too sick to even be angry.
But when the boss announced Gary’s reward — an all-expenses-paid vacation for his “dedication” — I saw red.
And that was the moment I decided: Gary wasn’t walking away from this lie untouched. Not with me still standing.
The Gathering Storm Clouds: That Awful Overture
The first cough echoed through the Monday morning quiet of Sterling Marketing like a gunshot in a library. It wasn’t just any cough. It was a deep, wet, phlegmy explosion, the kind that makes you instinctively check if you’ve been spattered.
I knew that cough. Gary Thorne.
He shuffled past my cubicle, a man whose martyr complex had its own frequent flyer miles. He wasn’t wearing a mask. Of course, he wasn’t.
Masks were for the weak, the undedicated. Gary was a trooper.
“Morning, Laura,” he rasped, his voice sounding like gravel gargled with mucus. He paused by my desk, leaning in conspiratorially, as if sharing a vital secret instead of a cloud of potential pathogens.
“Big week, huh? Henderson account. All hands on deck.”
His breath, warm and vaguely medicinal, washed over me. I subtly leaned back, my hand hovering near the hand sanitizer I kept religiously stocked.
“Morning, Gary,” I managed, trying to keep my tone neutral. “Feeling okay?”
A ridiculous question, given the auditory evidence.
He waved a dismissive hand, nearly knocking over my framed photo of Tom and Michael at the lake last summer. “Just a tickle. Nothing a real worker can’t handle.”
“Gotta push through, right? This Henderson deal is make-or-break for us. Mr. Henderson himself said it’s our Q4 game-changer.”
He was already moving towards his own den of contagion, leaving behind an invisible miasma of… well, Gary. I watched him go, a knot tightening in my stomach. The Henderson account.
It was massive, the biggest client pitch our department had handled in years. I was lead project manager on it. The pressure was already immense without adding a biological crisis to the mix.
My computer screen glowed with the project timeline, a complex web of dependencies and deadlines. It was tight, aggressive, but doable if everyone pulled their weight and, crucially, stayed healthy. A big if, apparently.
I took a long sip of my rapidly cooling coffee. The first cough was the overture. I had a sinking feeling the full symphony of sickness was about to begin, and I had a front-row seat whether I wanted one or not.
The air already felt thicker.
“Just A Little Something I Picked Up”
By mid-morning, Gary was a one-man germ orchestra. His cubicle, unfortunately situated just across the aisle and one down from mine, became Ground Zero. Every few minutes, another hacking eruption would shatter the illusion of productive calm.
Sneezes followed, wet and uncontained. He’d punctuate these with loud nose-blows that sounded like a walrus in distress.
During a brief lull, Susan from Accounting poked her head over her cubicle wall, her eyes wide. She mouthed, “Is he serious?”
I just shrugged, a gesture meant to convey ‘what can you do?’ mixed with ‘I know, it’s awful.’
Later, I saw him at the communal coffee machine, looking even worse. His face was pale, except for two feverish spots high on his cheeks. His eyes were bloodshot.
He was, naturally, maskless, refilling his “World’s Okayest Employee” mug.
“You know, Gary,” I said, keeping my distance as I waited for the microwave to heat my lunch – a sad salad I was already losing my appetite for. “There’s really no shame in taking a sick day. We can cover for a bit.”
It was a lie, mostly. Covering for anyone on the Henderson project right now would be a nightmare, but his presence was an active threat.
He turned, a theatrical sigh escaping his chapped lips. “Laura, some of us understand commitment. Deadlines don’t care if you’ve got the sniffles.”
“This is just a little something I picked up. Probably from my kid’s school. You know how it is.”
I didn’t, actually. My Michael was ten, and if he was even remotely as sick as Gary currently appeared, he’d be home, quarantined with Netflix and chicken soup. He certainly wouldn’t be sent to inflict his germs on his classmates.
“Right,” I said, my voice flatter than I intended. “But if it’s something contagious, you could take out half the team. Especially with the Henderson pressure.”
He actually scoffed. “Oh, please. It’s a cold.”
“People are too soft these days. Back in my day at MacroCorp, you came in unless you were literally on a stretcher. Builds character.”
He took a noisy slurp of his coffee, wincing slightly as it went down. “Besides, Mr. Henderson is counting on me for my input on the creative. Can’t let him down.”
His “input on the creative” usually involved him suggesting slightly different shades of blue for PowerPoint backgrounds. The man was delusional about his indispensability, and dangerously cavalier about everyone else’s health. My microwave dinged.
Salvation.
Brews, Blues, and Bad Attitudes
The breakroom felt smaller with Gary in it, not just physically, but emotionally. His martyrdom seemed to suck the air out of the place. I grabbed my salad, acutely aware of him watching me.
“You really think I should go home?” he asked, his tone daring me to say yes. It was a test.
He wanted to be told he was too valuable, too essential to leave.
I decided to meet the challenge, but not in the way he hoped. “Honestly, Gary? Yes. I think you should.”
“For your own sake, so you can actually get better, and for everyone else’s. We’re all under the gun with Henderson. The last thing we need is an office-wide flu.”
I kept my voice calm, reasonable. Like I was explaining why the sky was blue to a particularly stubborn toddler.
He bristled. His pallid skin seemed to flush a little.
“See, that’s the difference between some of us and others, Laura. Some of us see a challenge and we rise to it. We don’t run for the hills at the first sign of a cough.”
“This company needs dedication, especially now. Mr. Henderson values dedication.” He tapped his chest.
“Work ethic. That’s what gets big projects like Henderson landed.”
The unspoken accusation hung in the air: You don’t have it. You’re suggesting I leave, therefore you’re weak. It was infuriating.
My work ethic had me at my desk by 7:30 AM most days and frequently working late to ensure every detail of projects like Henderson was nailed down. I just didn’t believe in performative suffering.
“My work ethic includes not wanting to infect my colleagues, Gary,” I said, my voice a little tighter now. “It’s about team well-being ensuring we can deliver, not just one person grandstanding while everyone else gets sick.”
He just shook his head, a smug little smile playing on his lips. “Agree to disagree, I guess. Some of us are built tougher.”
He coughed again, a rattling sound that seemed to shake his thin frame, directly into his hand, which he then used to open the breakroom door. I watched him walk out, a trail of invisible viral breadcrumbs in his wake.
I stood there for a moment, my salad forgotten. The sheer, unadulterated selfishness of it was breathtaking. He wasn’t just sick; he was proud of being sick and present.
He was weaponizing his illness as a badge of honor. And the Henderson account, our critical project, was squarely in his line of fire. I suddenly felt a desperate need to douse my hands, my desk, my entire life, in industrial-strength disinfectant.
The First Domino
Back at my desk, the air seemed to crackle with unspoken anxieties. Every sniffle from a nearby cubicle, every throat clear, made me jump. I found myself tracking Gary’s movements, his coughs acting as a morbid form of sonar.
He was making his rounds, “collaborating,” as he’d call it, leaning over shoulders, pointing at screens, sharing his unique brand of airborne generosity.
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