The New Guy in Accounting Nobody Actually Hired

His name was Martin, or that is what the little paper sign taped to his monitor said. He arrived the same Monday I got back from a dental thing, so at first I assumed I had just missed the announcement. People start jobs. You blink and there is a new face at the coffee machine asking where the good mugs are.

Martin never asked where the good mugs are. Martin brought his own mug, a heavy brown thing with no logo, and he washed it at 4:45 every single afternoon before he left.

For the first few weeks nobody thought about him at all, which in an office is basically the highest compliment you can pay a person. He did reconciliations. He answered his phone with a soft, tired voice. He forwarded emails with the little note "as discussed" even when nothing had been discussed, which honestly made him fit right in.

The trouble started when Priya from HR sent around the new org chart. Martin was not on it. I figured it was a typo. Priya does not make typos, and when I mentioned him she just squinted at me and said, "Which desk?" I pointed. She walked over. Martin smiled up at her and said good morning and she smiled back and came to my desk and whispered, "I have never seen that man in my life and I onboard everyone."

So we did the thing you are supposed to do. We checked payroll. No Martin. We checked the badge system, the one that logs every door on every floor. No Martin, and yet Martin came in through the badged door every morning. We checked the desk itself. It had been assigned to a woman named Coleen who quit in 2019 and the system still listed her, so technically the seat Martin sat in belonged to a ghost, which did not make me feel better.