The fluorescent lights hummed a carol of their own, drowning out the distorted holiday music crackling over the intercom.

He adjusted the Club Card quotas for the third time that day, hands shaking, eyes darting toward the looming Big Gulp on Tabitha’s desk.

The first note arrived that morning, tucked under a pile of unsorted receipts:

"Merry Christmas, evan. They’re watching you ;)"

The handwriting was jagged, deranged, as if scratched onto the paper by someone unhinged.

By lunch, another note appeared, scrawled on the back of his employee handbook:

"You can fix the thresholds all you want, but the inventory doesn’t lie."

Tabitha, the obese Black on-site HR rep, caught him shredding it, her Big Gulp sloshing ominously. “Maybe they know about the missing Funyuns,” she hissed, taking a slow, deliberate sip.

The holiday décor mocked his every move—tinsel draped over expired mayonnaise jars, candy canes pointing toward the automated checkout systems, now whispering:

"They’re watching you, evan :)"

By closing time, the notes were everywhere: price tags on kale, printed on his paycheck, even embedded in the looping “Jingle Bells” over the intercom.

He tried to clock out, but the punch card machine jammed.

Stepping into the parking lot, he froze. The $afeway stretched endlessly in every direction—identical stores, each with their own Evan39 trapped inside, recalibrating Club Card quotas that would never balance. In the distance, he thought he saw another version of himself, hunched over a register, recalibrating thresholds in vain.

Evan signed, head down, and muttered, “Yes friends. This is fine.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5654240&forum_id=2Elisa#48485705)