I so, so wanted to just keep walking. Pretend that I had glanced to my left and seen nothing. Just continued on to the elevators straight ahead of me like I do every day. Act like I hadn't noticed them sitting there and didn't hear them calling my name. Force them to make some sort of scene trying to extract me from the group of people waiting to catch the car up to their respective floors. Politely smile and say, "No thanks, I'm good" when they ask if I will please come with them, they have something they need to talk to me about.
I didn't do any of that. All I could offer was a semi-slight skip in my walk before I veered off course, towards them, towards HR and towards my fate. My doom. The end of my story.
My mind had basically shut off over the mere ten seconds it took to reach them. I would almost always make sort of off-color, perhaps displaced joke in a situation like this. A good amount of them miss the mark, but that has never discouraged me from firing again. Like a 3-point gunner in basketball, you can't make a shot you don't take.
But this was different. My humor synapse did not fire. It had nothing to pull from. I had shut down internally. My legs were moving. Everything else was gone.
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