So I went to Hell

You ever sit back and think, “Okay, if I mess up too many times—like accidentally forget to Venmo your friend back, say you’re ‘on your way’ while still in a towel, or ignore a recruiter’s message from 2022—what happens next?”

Like… realistically.

Let’s say I don’t get into Heaven.

Maybe I miss the cutoff by just a hair.

Like I was this close, but then someone up there pulled the footage of me at 2 AM saying,

“God, if You give me this job, I’ll NEVER complain again,”

and then me 48 hours later saying,

“This place is actually hell.”

So down I go.

To Actual, Corporate-Adjacent, HR-Sanctioned Hell.

And let me tell you something…

It’s not fire and brimstone.

No.

Hell is an open office floor plan.

No windows.

Just LED lights and one broken ceiling fan that makes eye contact.

First person I see?

Karen.

She’s the VP of Eternal Policy Enforcement and Personal Discomfort.

Her badge says, “Hi, I’m Karen—And I WILL Be CC’ing Everyone.”

She greets me with a forced smile and a folder labeled:

“Performance Concerns: Eternal Edition.”

“Hi Alex,” she says,

“Before you get settled into your eternity, just a few quick things to review…”

Quick?

Karen pulls out a laminated flipbook titled “Your Mistakes, Chronologically.”

Slides 43 through 96 are just me not replying to “per my last email.”

My workstation?

• One wobbly chair.

• One monitor that only displays Outlook loading.

• One keyboard missing the ‘E’ key, so every sentence looks like ancient riddles.

My job?

Sit in an endless panel interview.

With three managers asking variations of “Where do you see yourself in five eternities?”

Karen pops in every 15 minutes to remind me I’m not “a cultural fit for peace.”

I ask if there’s coffee.

She nods, walks me to the break room, and opens a fridge full of empty creamers and one cold burrito from 2006.

The vending machine only accepts exposure and unpaid internships.

The only music playing is a corporate remix of “Let It Go” on loop.

Except it’s just the part where Elsa screams “Let it gooooo” over and over.

And she’s not even on beat.

I ask if I can go to the bathroom.

Karen hands me a timecard.

“You’ll need to accrue eternal PTO.”

At one point, Chad from Marketing (who has clearly been here a while) turns to me and whispers:

“Don’t ask questions. Just nod, say ‘Great synergy,’ and they won’t assign you to motivational quote duty.”

I try to escape.

I crawl through the ducts.

I make it to the exit.

Only to find…

another Karen.

This one’s in Legal.

She smiles and says:

“Per subsection infinity, paragraph sadness, escape attempts must be filed in triplicate. With a cover letter. In MLA format. Typed with no access to vowels.”

I cry a little.

Silently.

In Helvetica.

But just as I’m about to give up hope…

A printer across the room chokes out a single sheet of paper.

It says:

“Transfer Approved. Try Again. Please respond within 24 divine hours or offer expires.”

I scream, “YES!”

And Karen—the original one—walks me to the elevator and says:

“Fine. But I’ll be waiting if you ever forget to mute on Zoom again.”

Lesson learned.

Stay humble.

Stay kind.

Mute yourself.

And if you hear a Karen quoting the handbook in the afterlife?

RUN.