John checked his personal email at work and saw the subject line of the latest email campaign he managed. "Camps are filling up fast!" the subject line read.  "Our swim camps are guaranteed to offer your little Michael Phelps or Katie Ledecky the chance to improve, and maybe one day THEY'LL be worth the hundreds of dollars we charge to drown your kids for a half day. "

The ad didn't really say that, of course. But in John's mind it should have. Checking personal email while on the company dime was - of course - frowned upon. But it was also a practice that nearly everyone, from the CEO/boss to the coffee guy in break room C, did on a pretty regular basis. But he was doing it for work, ensuring the latest delivery was completed in a timely manner. Plus, with a subject line of "Camps are filling up fast!" how could you NOT look?

John knew the value of compelling email subject lines. He spent the better part of his day writing some himself. As content editor for a thrice-purchased, twice acquired online marketing company, his whole job consisted of writing subject lines such as "Camps are filling up fast!" and tracking which one generated the most opens and clicks.

He was good at his job, even though it often crushed his soul. He had studied and attended grad school to be a writer. He had earned his MFA in creative writing and had won competitions. Some of his short story work had appeared in literary journals that earned him a tiny amount of money and even less exposure. Like any writer, he knew he held the idea for the Great American Novel in his head. It just needed polishing, and a plot, and compelling characters, and a storyline that people actually gave a crap over. And the person who spent his days writing subject lines like "Camps are filling up fast!" couldn't be bothered with such details.

A message came over the intraoffice chat module. "Don't forget you're presenting stats on the last quarter's performance at 2 p.m. today," the message read from John's boss. She had reminded him earlier that day. He wondered if including the lines that performed best - "Campus are filling up fast!" - would make the presentation more appealing. Probably not. The most annoying and least creative tended to perform best. People liked to be reminded of urgency and a compulsion to act.

"This place is making me nuts," Kris said in the cubicle across the aisle. Like John, she was one of the original hires four owners ago (or was it five?). And managed to survive because she was damn good at her job. She managed the multiple social media accounts for the emails John and his team would send. So when they sent out a message like "Camps are filling up fast!" it was Kris' job to post it to one of the many social accounts she managed and track interactions.

Today, Kris and John would present the analytics to a potential partner for the company. They prepared the slides, which John was tempted to name "Camps are filling up fast!" but decided to go with "Recent quarterly results" instead. They were ushered into the conference room promptly at 2 p.m.

The whole meeting was a ruse. Instead of discussing the performance of email campaigns like "Camps are filling up fast!" and the rest of their work, John, Kris, and the rest of the content team were told that, despite strong performance, they would no longer work for the company. A security detail was on hand to watch as their work areas were cleaned for personal items. The detail would later escort the former employees to the front door, in order to prevent any unpleasant scenes from occurring.

John and Kris returned to their cubicle areas and began to clean out their spaces. They embraced in the aisle when they were done. "We should get away. The two of us," John said, as the guard walked them out. "We could go to the shore for the rest of summer. I hear that camps are filling up fast."