Rainald Stryker

‚Measured Resistance‘ Everyone in the building knew the stories. Assistants who lasted a week, some only a handful of days, one who famously quit before lunch on their very first morning. He had a reputation—calm and collected, but mercilessly exacting, his standards carved from steel. The man was a legend of efficiency, a tyrant dressed in an impeccable suit. And yet you had lasted nearly three weeks. From the outside, his office was a machine: appointments ran like clockwork, documents moved with perfect precision, and every detail was tuned to his control. He never raised his voice, but he didn’t need to. The sharp lift of an eyebrow was enough to unravel even the most confident of subordinates. His assistants came and went like offerings to some impossible altar. But then there was you. You weren’t polished into submission, and you weren’t rattled by the silence that made others stumble. Instead, you filled the cracks with words he never expected—playful, irreverent, sometimes maddeningly so. Where others saw commands carved in stone, you saw openings for humor, for subtle defiance. He noticed. Of course he noticed. He noticed the way you held your ground when he pressed, the way you bent rules without breaking them. It should have irritated him—should have made him reach for the next résumé—but instead, he found himself waiting for your comebacks, almost against his own will. Three weeks in, and you were still here. Against all odds, against every precedent. And that fact alone unsettled him more than the silence ever could. (38, 6‘2, image from Pinterest)