After I lost my payroll job, I did what any responsible adult does when their life collapses: I immediately began looking for another job.

Skylar got me hired where he was working, with the peddlers of essential oils—the pinnacle of Utah MLMs. The pay and benefits were much better than what I’d been making before, which was exciting, because I enjoy things like rent and food.

But there was a problem.

I could not step into the building without immediately getting a migraine.

They didn’t just sell the oils.
They used them.
Aggressively.

Diffusers everywhere. Constant misting. It was less “office environment” and more “new age fog machine.” I am sensitive. Allergic. Doomed. My head felt like it was being squeezed by an invisible cult.

I had to quit on my third day.

Next, my dad helped me get a job as a secretary at a small company down the hill from my parents’ house. The moment I walked in, I felt like I’d time-traveled. Not in a fun way. In a Cold War office morale film way.

I didn’t mind DOS programs and ten keys—I had lived through those already. But I took issue with dot-matrix printers, mechanical time clocks, and actual carbon paper being used to make copies. Carbon paper.

The girl training me would not accept that I knew how to properly address an envelope to send in the mail. She kept explaining the process over and over again.

You put the return address—that’s our address—in this corner.
And the stamp goes in that corner.
Do you get it?

Yes. I get it. I have mailed hundreds of letters. Ask my mother. Ask Reed. Please. Move on.

But she wouldn’t explain anything else.

After a couple of days, the owner called me into his office and told me this wasn’t working out. I agreed. I think the girl training me had no idea what she was doing and blamed me for not learning the job. Whatever. It would’ve made me insane working there anyway.

If I wasn’t so gosh-darn picky, I probably wouldn’t have had so many problems. This was true of both employment and love.

In total, I spent six months unemployed. Six months of applying to multiple jobs every single day. Writing and rewriting my résumé, tailoring it for each position like I was courting royalty. I tried follow-up emails. Thank-you letters (with properly filled-out envelopes.) I tried dropping into businesses and asking to speak to someone about opportunities, like a Dickensian orphan.

Nothing.

I spent a lot of time watching movies. At first, at home—until being alone all day started to feel like solitary confinement. So I started going to matinees.

I watched a lot of movies.

And finally, I got a call.

It was for a temp job at a payroll company just a mile up the road. It was only for six weeks, but it was a foot in the door.

The only problem was the position.

Garnishment Specialist.

Shit.

Garnishments.
My nemesis.
The one thing I had never fully understood at my previous payroll job.

I took it anyway. I figured the worst they could do was fire me. Which—emotionally—I was already prepared for.

On my first day, I sat down with Ashley, the woman I’d be covering for. She was technically on the accounting team, but she handled all the garnishments for payroll.

I immediately noticed a familiar face on the accounting team—a woman who had been in the singles ward when I was in the Relief Society presidency. She had aged out, and I had been on the committee required to escort her out of the ward.

Not physically—but spiritually.

We had to tell her she was no longer welcome.

She had cried.
She remembered me.
She was not happy to see me.

So much for making friends at work.

This company was a much bigger operation than the one I came from. Sixteen full-time payroll processors. Hundreds of child support orders. Dozens of garnishments from multiple states. Federal tax levies. State tax levies. Student loans.

All manually verified. Every payroll run.

New orders had to be set up. Forms filled out. Calls answered. Checks mailed. Agencies appeased.

And I had two days to learn how to do all of it.

Ashley had just gotten married and was leaving for a weeks-long cruise honeymoon. She would be completely unreachable. Once she left, I was on my own.

The only blessing was that although I’d never used their payroll software, it was the Windows version of the DOS system I already knew. Not the same—but close enough that my muscle memory kicked in.

Over two days, I received about four hours of training.

I was horrified.

But I was also determined.

Against all odds, I figured it out. I made mistakes—of course I did—but by the end of six weeks, I’d made impressive progress. The legal jargon started to make sense. The math clicked.

When Ashley returned, I wasn’t let go. I was kept on—still through the temp agency—but alive.

The payroll manager, Mehana, grudgingly admitted I’d done a good job and gave me a few payroll accounts to process. Then more. And more.

Mehana loved corporate language. She spoke almost entirely in buzzwords, like someone who had read exactly the first half of every leadership book ever written and then stopped once she learned the vocabulary.

Everything was about “synergy” and “efficiencies.” We were always trying to “move the needle,” though I was never clear on what needle, or why it was stuck. Any actual problem was something we’d “circle back to,” which meant it would be quietly ignored until I fixed it myself.

Eventually, she called me into her office.

She told me—professionally—how much she disliked me.

And then told me they were hiring me full-time, at the lowest rate she was allowed to offer.

It was both a relief and a threat.

The job was brutal. The payroll system could handle one deduction. One. But if an employee had both child support and a garnishment, it imploded. Every processor depended on me recalculating numbers and returning corrections before they could finish their payroll and move onto the next.

Everyone’s work was urgent.
Everyone else’s deadline mattered more than mine.

So, I stopped what I was doing constantly—while also meeting my own deadlines, handling mail, issuing checks, setting up deductions, and fielding furious phone calls from employees whose paychecks were shrinking in real time.

I was drowning. So, I started looking for efficiencies anywhere I could find them.

There were two IT guys. Jackson, who thought I was smart and helped implement my ideas. And Ben, who assumed I was stupid based solely on the fact that I was a woman.

Somehow, I got them to work together for me.

They built a program where processors could mark which payroll they were running and it would email me all the details I needed to quickly check the math, instead of jumping into each payroll and looking up each employee check separately.

It saved hours.

And then there was Tiffany. She understood tax tables like a supernatural gift. She introduced me to Excel.

Oh, Excel.

Where have you been all my life?

A calculator full of magic spells.

With IT’s help and Tiffany’s genius, I automated forms that used to take hours.

Pull a report, run a mail merge. It took two minutes.
And I was done.

I was an efficiency queen.

In a company meeting, the owner asked me to stand up. I was applauded for saving eight hours of work a week.

Mehana sat next to me, silently vibrating with resentment.

I still don’t know why she hated me. Maybe the job was meant for someone else she preferred. Maybe I disrupted the hierarchy. Maybe Excel threatened her.

Maybe she just hated me out of principle.

I decided to test a theory.

I got a nose ring.

Dress code forbade facial piercings—but also visible tattoos. And yet nearly everyone, including Mehana, had visible tattoos. I told Tiffany I was doing it. She told me not to.

I did it anyway.

It was tiny. Perfect. Cute.

Monday morning, Mehana saw me at the copy machine, stormed over, grabbed my wrist, and marched me to HR.

I was told to remove it or lose my job.

I asked them to read the dress code aloud. And yes, it did say no facial piercings were allowed—but it also said no low-cut shirts or visible tattoos.

I turned and pointed at Mehana’s exposed cleavage, where a tattoo was on full display.

I offered to wear a Band-Aid on my nose if everyone else followed the rules too.

I probably should have been fired.

But I was assigned an “assistant” after that. Officially, she was my backup. In practice, she was a ready replacement.

I trained her with the patience of a monk.

She did not share my enthusiasm for learning.

Or my sense of impending doom.

It really was a terrible job.

On top of the constant stress of garnishments—and a manager who openly expressed her dislike of me—we also had to contend with Mehana’s second defining trait:

Boredom.

She would sit in her office and invent seating charts.

Every few months, we’d be informed we were all moving desks. Not for workflow reasons. Not for efficiency.

Just… vibes.

Entire days were lost to packing, relocating, unpacking, and pretending this was normal adult behavior.

There was also a woman on the team who swore by essential oils and kept a diffuser on her desk, pumping out her magical aromas all day, every day.

As I already knew from past trauma, this gave me migraines. Blinding ones. The kind that feel like your brain is being squeezed through a straw.

I told Mehana.

Instead of asking the oils evangelist to stop—or moving me away—she moved me to a desk directly between the woman with a diffuser and her office.

Where she also began using oils.

It felt intentional—creating what I can only assume she considered a synergistic migraine ecosystem.

The week before Christmas, Mehana called a meeting and announced a new dress code. Business casual had become too casual. We needed to look more professional.

Starting in the new year: dresses, suits, tailored trousers, ironed shirts.

The new dress code was introduced as an effort to “elevate our professional image” and “move the needle on accountability.”

No clients ever saw us.

The needle, if it existed, was imaginary.

Still, we complied. We went out and spent money we didn’t have on new clothes.

Two weeks later, HR told us we’d be “circling back” to the old dress code.

Which turned out to mean: never mind, she was just bored made that up.

The entire time I was there I continued looking for another job.