▸ Column · Contemporary Gotham City: a corporate office tower in the neon-drenched, decaying Financial District
THE JOKER replies.
The letter
Six weeks into my job at a Gotham Financial District tower and someone's been raiding my labeled lunch containers — 'HANDS OFF: KENJI'S, ALLERGIC' in fat Sharpie — as if the label is a prix-fixe menu. Last Monday they finished my mango sticky rice and returned the empty container rinsed and upright in the fridge, like a folded thank-you card. I escalated to sticky notes warning of contamination; the thief ate through them and left a Post-it reading only 'delicious.' My neighbor Priscilla has pinned it on the new finance hire Bartholomew, who survives on desk almonds and goes wounded when I mention it. Do I rig the container, haul this to HR, or accept that my mango sticky rice now belongs to the building?
The Joker replies
Oh, Kenji. HA. I've gotten letters from the Arkham warden threatening to reclassify me as a weather event, and this is the one that's made me laugh all week.
The rinsed container. Left upright. Like a folded napkin. That's not theft — that's theater, and your thief is the most interesting person in that building, including you.
I've watched Gotham tear itself apart over property for years. Banks, museums, whole city blocks — and the moral always arrives a day late, dressed in a suit. But someone in your office had one bad day — or maybe just one honest moment — read 'HANDS OFF — ALLERGIC,' ate the mango sticky rice, and came back to leave a Post-it that said delicious. Ha-ha-HA. That's not a lunch thief. That's liberation theology.
You want to trap Bartholomew. You want HR to validate your little constitution of the break room refrigerator. Why so serious? The real punchline is that six weeks of increasingly unhinged sticky notes turned you from Kenji Who Has Lunch into Kenji Who Has a Nemesis — and that is better.
Forget the trap. Forget the committee. Put out something magnificent tomorrow and wait.
One bad day. Your thief already knows.
Come find me when you do too.
— The Joker
Batman weighs in
He thinks the Post-it is a love letter. He would.
I've watched contempt like that take root in worse places than a break room. It always looks small at first. One rinsed container. Then a boundary goes unaddressed, and it doubles.
The allergy label was ignored six times. That is not philosophy — that is a pattern, and patterns have a next move already planned.
Stop the note war. You are showing him your reactions. Prop a phone on the shelf, angled at the fridge. Forty-eight hours. Document it. Then you confront Bartholomew with evidence, not a hunch and a Post-it of your own.
HR is your last lever. Do not spend leverage before you know what you have.
He called the thief enlightened. He is wrong. Do it right.
— Batman
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