I was buried under a mountain of paperwork, completely empty-handed, when I posted a quick message in our team’s Slack channel. I asked if anyone could grab me lunch on their way back, offering to buy them a boba tea in return. The new intern, Tessa, saw the message and volunteered to help. But when she handed me the takeout box, she kept her eyes glued to her freshly done acrylic nails, picking at them idly. “So, I was scrolling through TikTok earlier,” she said, her tone casually drifting. “Starbucks just came out with this new fruit Frappuccino.” “It’s only eight dollars, but I haven’t tried it yet.” My finger hovered over the boba app. My entire lunch, including delivery, hadn’t even run me five dollars. Yet, seeing the eager look on her face, I decided not to make a fuss. I quietly opened the Starbucks app and ordered the drink for her. Tessa beamed instantly, promising she’d always be down to help out in the future. The next morning, I had barely walked through the door and hadn’t even clocked in yet when Tessa marched over and plopped a plastic takeout container right onto my desk. “Morning, June! I grabbed you lunch again today,” she announced. “It’s a chicken teriyaki bowl from the diner downstairs. Only four dollars. And for the delivery fee, same as yesterday, please. I want a Rose Latte from Starbucks.” “Venti, iced, blonde espresso, light ice, no foam. It’s only nine dollars. Thanks!” 1 I blinked, staring down at my phone. It was barely nine in the morning. We didn’t even take lunch until noon. Why was she handing me a hot lunch three hours early? Seeing me silent and staring at my screen, Tessa tapped the plastic lid of the bowl, prompting me. “Did you get all that? Venti Rose Latte. And don’t be cheap like yesterday, ordering a Grande. I barely got a taste of it.” She actually rolled her eyes. A dry laugh escaped my throat. “I didn’t ask you to get me lunch today,” I said. Tessa stiffened, her face instantly flushing red. “Excuse me? Are you seriously power-tripping on an intern right now?” “I already bought the food, and now you’re telling me you don’t want it? Do you have any idea how early I had to drag myself out of bed just to get this for you?” “I don’t care. You have to buy me my coffee. I earned it!” She practically stomped her foot, her voice rising so loud it began drawing looks from across the floor. Before long, a few colleagues wandered over. “What’s going on over here?” “Why the drama so early?” “June, is everything okay?” Valerie, a senior designer who had been with the company as long as I had, looked at me with confusion. Before I could open my mouth, Tessa’s eyes welled with tears. “Valerie, you have to help me,” she sobbed, turning to the crowd. “June asked me to get her lunch, so I did. Now she’s refusing to pay me back!” She sniffled loudly, batting her perfectly curled lashes. To me, it was a blatant performance, but to everyone else, she looked utterly helpless. The office began to whisper. I looked around at the faces of my coworkers. There was no real malice in their eyes, but the underlying assumption was clear: the veteran employee was picking on the defenseless newcomer. Valerie reached over to hand Tessa a tissue. “Hey, don’t cry. June isn’t that kind of person. There has to be a misunderstanding here.” “Look, I’ll just Venmo you the money myself. Let’s not make a scene. It’s going to look terrible if the supervisors see this.” As Valerie pulled out her phone, I quickly caught her wrist. “Don’t worry about it, Valerie,” I muttered, gritting my teeth. “I’ll pay her.” If I let Valerie cover it, the narrative that I was bullying the intern would be set in stone. Trying to clear my name after that would be impossible. I unlocked my phone. A victorious smirk flashed across Tessa’s face before she quickly masked it. “It’s thirteen dollars total. Make sure you get the amount right.” My thumb froze over the screen. The teriyaki bowl was four dollars, and her latte was nine. The coffee cost more than double the food she brought me. But I couldn’t say a word. Not with her tears still fresh. I processed the transfer. My chest felt tight, a heavy knot of frustration burning in my throat. The second the notification popped up on her phone, Tessa’s tears vanished. She offered Valerie a sweet thank-you and skipped back to her desk. Valerie patted my shoulder in silent sympathy before the crowd dispersed. The office returned to its usual hum. I set my bag down and sank into my chair. The cheap plastic container Tessa had brought was sitting right on top of my keyboard, and orange grease was already dripping down the side, seeping into the keys. I stared at the thirteen-dollar lunch for a long, quiet moment. Then, I picked it up, threw it straight into the trash, and booted up my computer. I had barely opened Google Docs when Tessa’s profile picture started flashing on my Slack. “Hey June! :)” She sent an emoji of a dancing cat. “Just so we’re clear, that thirteen dollars was for my trouble this morning. Don’t forget my Venti latte this afternoon!” 2 I stared at the message, completely baffled. I typed back: “Excuse me? On what grounds?” “I already paid you.” Tessa replied almost instantly: “That doesn’t count.” “It’s just a coffee. You’ve been here for years, are you really going to pinch pennies over this?” “Don’t think I don’t know about that three-thousand-dollar bonus you got from the last project. Every other team lead takes their team out when they get a bonus. You’re the only one hoarding it.” “To make up for it, you’re not just buying me coffee this afternoon. You’re buying one for all the interns on our team.” “Otherwise, I’ll post about what happened this morning in the main company Slack channel and let everyone judge you.” “It’s not like you’re the one who decides if we get hired full-time anyway.” Her smug threat glared back at me from the screen. I took a slow breath and did the math. There were five interns in our group. Tessa was the most recent hire, and her evaluation was scheduled for next week, along with the others. Buying five premium Starbucks drinks would run me about forty-five dollars. That was practically my budget for a whole day, or the cost of several days’ worth of cancer medication for my mother. The project Tessa mentioned was one I had managed entirely by myself last year. We finished it in mid-January, but due to administrative delays, the bonus didn’t pay out until this month. It had absolutely nothing to do with the interns. The company had awarded me a three-thousand-dollar bonus. The moment the money hit my account, I used it to pay off my mother’s hospital bills. Then, I tagged everyone in our team group chat: [Hey everyone, I have some urgent family matters to take care of this month, but I promise I’ll treat everyone to a nice dinner as soon as next month’s paycheck comes in.] Tessa had been in that chat. She had replied with a heart emoji and even sent me a private message asking if I needed any help. She wrote, “We’re a team, June. Don’t carry it all on your shoulders.” At the time, I genuinely thought I had hit the jackpot with an incredibly sweet, supportive intern. I never expected her to completely turn on me just ten days later. When I didn’t reply right away, another message popped up. “June? Hello?” “Don’t play dead.” “I can see you’re active on Slack.” I took a deep breath and typed out a brief reply. “Got it.” You want Starbucks, Tessa? Fine. I’ll buy it. But once you drink that coffee, you’re going to have to deal with the consequences. I opened the food delivery app and placed an order for five drinks. My hand didn’t shake when I hit pay. Forty-five dollars was a steep price for a lesson, but it was worth it. It would show me exactly where these interns stood, and whether they were worth mentoring any longer. At one in the afternoon, the delivery arrived. I carried the drink tray over to the cluster of desks where the interns worked. I pulled out a Matcha Frappuccino first. “Becca, I know you love matcha. This one’s for you.” Becca looked up, pushing her glasses up her nose with a warm smile. “Oh, thank you so much, June!” Tessa immediately frowned, pouting. “Actually, Becca, you have it backward. I’m the one who convinced June to buy these. You should really be thanking me.” “Right, June?” Becca offered a tense, awkward smile and quickly looked back down at her monitor. I reached for the next cup and handed it to Owen. “Owen, a flat white for you.” Owen took it with both hands. “Thanks, June.” Tessa made a loud clicking sound with her tongue. Owen’s hands froze on the cup. He quickly cleared his throat and added, “And thanks, Tessa.” Only then did Tessa look satisfied, lifting her chin high. “That’s more like it.” As I handed out the rest of the drinks to the other interns, Tessa trailed right behind me, loudly narrating her “heroic” feat of forcing me to buy everyone coffee. I didn’t say a single word of defense, acting as if she were nothing but background noise. Soon, four of the cups were gone. Only the Venti Rose Latte remained in the bag. Staring hungrily at the oversized cup, Tessa eagerly reached her hand out toward me. “You don’t need to hand this one to me, June. Just let me grab it.” As she reached, I took a step back. And right in front of her face, I pulled the straw out of its wrapper, punctured the lid, and took a slow, deliberate sip. I looked at her with genuine confusion. “I’m sorry. When did I ever say this one was for you?” 3 The smile on Tessa’s face instantly froze. Before she could even begin to unleash her fury, Valerie called out from across the room, waving a hand. “June! The boss wants to see you in his office.” I set the coffee down, completely ignoring the venomous glare Tessa was shooting at me, and walked into the manager’s office. Our boss, Thomas, was on a call and gestured for me to take a seat while he wrapped up. I pulled out my phone, intending to reply to a client’s message. Instead, Becca’s profile icon was flashing on my screen. She had sent three screenshots of an private group chat along with a screen-recorded audio clip. Below them, she wrote: “June, is there some kind of misunderstanding between you and Tessa?” I tapped open the screenshots. Tessa had been venting in an exclusive intern group chat. She claimed she had gone out of her way to be helpful by grabbing me lunch, only for me to refuse to even buy her a simple cup of coffee. She painted me as a toxic veteran abusing my authority, power-tripping over the new hires, and using a Starbucks order to humiliate her. To make it look convincing, she had attached two screenshots of her payment history. One was from yesterday for a four-dollar lunch. The other was from this morning for a four-dollar teriyaki bowl. She had also recorded a voice note from the restroom, her voice trembling with theatrical sobs: “I know we’re just interns and we’re supposed to listen to the team lead, but are we not even human to her?” “Why does she get to push us around like this?” “She’s exploiting me today, but tomorrow it’ll be one of you. None of us are safe from her!” She sounded utterly heartbroken, masterfully spinning a narrative of toxic workplace bullying. In the screenshots, Becca had tried to defend me: “I don’t think June is that kind of person…” “That’s just because she plays nice!” Tessa fired back. “If she’s so great, why didn’t she buy us dinner after getting that huge bonus? I asked around. The manager of Team Three took his entire team out for a premium seafood buffet last week.” After that, the chat had gone completely dead. Becca sent another text directly to me: “June, do you want to explain things to the group?” I didn’t reply. She followed up with: “To be honest, it’s not really about the free food. It’s just that every other team lead does it…” “Tessa kind of has a point.” A point? A cold, bitter smile crept onto my face. My chest felt hollow. I had mentored five interns in total. Owen was the first to arrive back in March. Mid-way through, he had to take a two-month leave of absence to prepare for his graduation thesis defense. HR had approached me then, stating that internship slots were highly competitive and there was a massive waitlist of eager candidates. They advised me to let him go. It was me who argued that the job market was brutal for new grads. I was the one who treated the HR manager to lunch and begged them to keep Owen on. That was the only reason he still had a job here. Then there was Becca. She had come in with zero experience. In the beginning, she struggled constantly to keep pace, frequently staying in the office until eleven or twelve at night. A few times, the pressure got so bad she ended up crying quietly at her desk while working late. When I noticed, I immediately reorganized her workload. I took her under my wing, teaching her the ropes step-by-step. For the past two weeks, she hadn’t had to work a single hour of overtime. Aside from not buying them dinner with my own personal bonus, I had gone above and beyond for these interns. And yet, for the sake of a free meal, they were already taking Tessa’s side. I looked down at my phone, ready to type a reply, when Becca sent one final screenshot. One of the other interns had voiced a concern in their group chat: “Look, whatever the case, June is still our team lead. Tessa, if you piss her off this badly, what if she blocks your full-time offer?” The others seemed to snap back to reality, chiming in: “Yeah, we still need to pass our evaluations.” “Tessa, stop stirring the pot. Jobs are so hard to find right now. If this ruins our chances, are you going to take responsibility?” “It took me forever to land this position.” “My parents had to pull so many strings for me to get this gig.” Tessa replied with a smug, dismissive emoji. “What is there to be scared of? I already asked HR. The final hire-on power belongs to Thomas, the big boss. The team leads don’t have a say.” “June is just a glorified shift supervisor. If she wasn’t assigned to train us, nobody would even look her way.” “Honestly, the more I think about it, the angrier I get.” “I’m going to make a scene out of this. I’ll make sure everyone in the company knows how she treated me. Why should I take this lying down?” “When the time comes, just make sure you all back me up.” The screenshots ended there. Becca sent one last text: “June, I know it’s tough on you too. But everyone is really worked up because of what Tessa said.” “Maybe you should just swallow your pride and apologize to her? It’s not like a meal costs that much anyway.” “If this turns into a massive HR issue, it won’t look good on your record either.” I stared at those words, feeling a cold weight sink to the pit of my stomach. Just as I was about to type back, Thomas hung up his call. He turned to me, resting his hands on his desk. “June, the company is restructuring next month. Your team is going to become an independent department.” “I want you to start thinking about the intern evaluations.” “You decide who we keep and who we let go. I won’t interfere.” 4 For a second or two, I just sat there, completely frozen. Then, a smile broke across my face. It wasn’t a polite, professional smile. It was the sudden, sweet release of a suffocating weight that had been pressing down on my chest all day. Thomas saw my expression and let out a soft chuckle. “Don’t feel too pressured, June.” “I’ve watched how hard you work to train these new hires. I know how much effort you put in.” “With this restructure, your team is going to be independent. That means we need people with the right attitude.” His tone grew serious. “If someone’s skills are lacking, we can train them.” “But if their character is rotten, there’s nothing we can do to save them.” I nodded slowly. “And the criteria for the evaluations?” Thomas slid a folder across the desk toward me. “You set them.” “Performance, teamwork, accountability, and integrity.” “You make the final call on who stays. Even if you decide to let every single one of them go, I trust your judgment.” I looked down at the folder, pressing my fingers against the crisp paper. Becca’s screenshots were still sitting open on my phone screen in my lap. Tessa thought I was just a nobody. She thought I had zero power over her career. She thought no one cared. She was about to find out how wrong she was. Kindness does not mean being toothless. I closed the folder with a firm snap. “Understood. Thank you, Thomas.” The moment I stepped out of Thomas’s office, I noticed how unnaturally quiet the floor had become. It was eerie. I looked up and saw a crowd gathered around the breakroom. Tessa was standing right in the center, her eyes red and puffy, clutching a crumpled tissue. Her shoulders trembled with soft, dramatic sobs. “I wasn’t trying to take advantage of anyone,” she sniffled, wiping her nose. “I just… I just feel so humiliated.” “She bought coffee for literally every single person on the team except for me. How is that not targeted?” She paused to dab at her eyes. “And this morning was the same thing.” “I went out of my way to be nice and grab her lunch, but when she transferred the money, she looked so disgusted. I know she got that huge bonus, and maybe she just thinks interns aren’t worth the price of a coffee.” “If I knew she was going to use her position to bully me like this, I would’ve just kept my mouth shut and taken the loss.” She played the victim flawlessly, making me out to be some miserable tyrant power-tripping over a helpless kid. Valerie frowned, still looking skeptical. “Tessa, are you absolutely sure June did this on purpose?” Tessa nodded vigorously, more tears spilling over. “Valerie, why would I make this up?” She turned her tearful gaze to the other interns standing nearby. “Tell them. Isn’t that exactly what happened?” The interns shifted uncomfortably, exchanging tense glances. Owen’s lips parted, but he quickly looked down, failing to find his voice. Another intern stared at the floor. Becca hesitated for a long second, then murmured in a tiny voice, “This afternoon… she did buy drinks for everyone except Tessa.” The moment those words left her mouth, the atmosphere in the room shifted. The looks my coworkers threw in my direction grew cold and disapproving. “June usually isn’t like this.” “Maybe she’s dealing with too much stress at home lately and just snapped?” “Still, taking it out on an intern is completely out of line.” “The poor girl just started. That’s incredibly harsh.” Hearing the whispers of support, Tessa’s crying grew even louder. She looked up and caught me watching. For a split second, a flash of pure triumph gleamed in her eyes. Her look said it all: See? I can make everyone turn on you in a heartbeat. I stood my ground, making no move to defend myself. Sometimes, simply shouting the truth doesn’t work. You have to let the lie balloon to its absolute limit before popping it with a single, sharp needle. I walked over, wrapping my knuckles against a nearby desk to get their attention. “Since everyone is gathered here, this is perfect.” The crowd turned to look at me. Tessa sniffled loudly, quickly speaking over me. “June, I know you don’t like me. But did you really have to humiliate me like this? I’m just an intern.” I stared at her, my expression blank. “Are you finished?” She choked on her words, momentarily stunned. I lifted the folder in my hand, my voice remarkably calm. “Thomas just finished giving me my briefing.” “I will be personally conducting the evaluations for all the interns’ full-time offers.”
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