It was a good morning in the office. Two days had passed since I joined my new team at work. Sitting at my new desk, I sipped coffee and stared into my computer monitor. It felt good being surrounded by friends in the office. My ‘not quite a cubicle’ held two desks, one for me and the other for my friend Kate. Behind us sat another ‘not quite a cubicle’ with two desks. One was recently emptied and the other was for Jess.

It was good to see Jess again because she had been a colleague on my former team, a couple of years prior. A comrade in arms from Customer Service. My new set up was turning out to better than what I had initially hoped for. The past couple days held lots of jokes between Kate, Jess, and I. Today was different though.

After some time training and working on new types of work, I looked back to find Jess throwing out old papers and other clutter from her little filing cabinet. I asked her what she was doing, and she replied that she was told to clean her desk up. I didn’t think much of it at the time. Her desk had often been cluttered. Still though, in the back of my mind, I thought she seemed a bit concerned.

The next day I walked in bright and early, hung my coat up and booted up my computer. I picked up my coffee mug and turned to walk over to the kitchenette when it hit me. Jess was gone. Not only was she gone, but her desk was completely vacant. There were no pictures, pens, mouse, or mugs. The keyboard and mouse were both missing. Even her computer monitors were gone. The desk stood nearly barren, save for one toaster.

I stared blankly at the desk’s new chrome occupant. The toaster stared blankly back at me, though it’s hard to tell where toasters look since they have no eyes. I looked around the office, Jess was nowhere to be seen.

Throughout the day, I periodically looked back over my shoulder at the lonely toaster and wondered what happened to my friend. The end of the day is when it hit me, no matter who we are or what we’re on this Earth to do, we can always be replaced by machines.