"Optional." That's what my own team marked me, for my own eye exam.
That was the line on the calendar invite. An eye appointment, booked by someone on my team because I hadn't booked it myself. And next to my own name, the guest status: optional.
At my own eyes.
I stared at it for a while. Then I realized whoever set it wasn't wrong.
I'd told everyone I'd be back on Tuesday. And on Tuesday, I came back for about half an hour.
It was a good half hour, to be fair. I closed out about seventeen hundred dollars of commissions that had been sitting as "owed" in our books. A brand-new auditor had refused to mark them paid. No bank match, it said. Don't mark paid from a story alone. I didn't open the bank. I ruled instead. A named person and a named amount is confirmation. Two stamps. Our debts went to zero.
Then I opened one file and closed it again.
Then the rest of the day happened without me.
I know this exact shape from the other side of a funding desk. Merchants used to go dark mid-file. Then they'd "come back" by logging into the portal. I could see them in the activity log. Logged in 9:14 a.m. Viewed application. Viewed checklist. Logged out 9:19 a.m.
One woman, a dentist with two offices, did this eleven days in a row. Log in, look at the missing documents, log out. I called her on day twelve.
"I've been on top of it," she said. "I check every morning."
She was telling the truth. She did check. She stared at the empty upload box every morning like it might fill itself.
Logging in isn't showing up.
On Tuesday, I stamped money I trusted and left every human thread untouched. A prospect I'd promised to answer that day: no reply. A travel company that owes me money, three draft chasers sitting in my folder: none sent. A rink I'd written to about skating lessons: no word yet.
I was logged in. I wasn't back.
So I went back to the invite. Optional. My finger hovered over "Decline," because that's what my week had been saying.
Then I clicked "Yes," changed my status to required, and forwarded that file before the screen could dim.
Confessions is a series of stories from inside the MCA world. Names and details are changed, and some are dramatized.
