Anonymous Until Midnight

The anonymous feedback form opens every review cycle at nine and closes at midnight, and I always tell myself this is the year I actually use it.

I heard two people in the elevator tonight going on about how lucky the team is to have him, how he always makes time for people. I held the door a beat too long so I wouldn't have to agree out loud.

When I opened the form just now, there was already a draft sitting in the box. Not blank. Eleven months of it. Sentences I must have started and abandoned every time this thing pops up. Half a paragraph about the meeting where he took credit for the migration plan. A line about the raise that quietly stopped being discussed once I asked about it directly. A sentence that just says he probably doesn't realize he does this, and stops there.

I didn't remember writing any of it. I've apparently been building this case in five minute pieces for almost a year, in a box I never once submitted.

Midnight's in forty minutes. I read my own handwriting back like it belongs to someone angrier than I let myself be at my desk.

I close the tab without deleting the draft. It'll still be there next cycle, a little longer, still mine, still unsent.