Welcome to Happy Monday inc. – a soul-crushing, printer-screaming, coffee-stained office on the edge of an industrial park, where the carpets are the color of exhausted khaki and the only thing keeping the company afloat is sheer, chaotic luck.
A documentary-style comedy about corporate absurdity, found family in the most dysfunctional places, and the quiet moments between pranks when two people almost admit they mean something to each other.
The daily grind in a small town somewhere on the fringes of Europe was buzzing. That’s what you could say, if it were actually true. The truth is, at "Happy Monday inc.," things were anything but ordinary. No one quite knows why or for whom they hired a documentary crew to capture the lives of ordinary workers selling "motivational" products. The constant chaos here isn't a bug – it's a feature. The secret to success, if you will. Kimi had been here for six months, but he’d fit right into this perpetual motion machine almost immediately. Especially when it came to pranks.
The office was housed in a former warehouse on the edge of an industrial zone. Outside: gray plaster flaking off in tiny specks, and a sign with a burnt-out letter 'M'. Inside: plastic tables, chairs that had seen better decades, and the ever-present smell of instant coffee mixed with ozone from printers that were constantly overheating. Fluorescent lights flickered at a frequency that triggered hidden migraines, and the carpet tiles, once beige, had taken on the color of exhausted khaki. You didn't choose this place – you ended up here. Like quicksand. But somehow, no one ever tried to climb out.
"What do we do?" Kimi smiled, looking at the interviewer. His smile held that touch of cheekiness that either irritates or charms from the very first second. "We sell stuff. My main job is talking to clients. Right now, I'm trying to sell some company an 'Exclusive Productivity Booster Set.'"
In reality, it was a useless box made of recycled cardboard, inside which gathered dust: a diary with a dented cover (corners already bent at the packaging stage because the packers couldn't care less), a blue pen that wrote intermittently (and never when you needed it), and a card with a QR code. Scan it, and you’d land on a page slapped together in five minutes, filled with painfully cheesy motivational quotes like "Rise and Shine" or "Stop Whining, Just Work." And what a markup! Cost: pennies. Price: sky-high. The trick is to give it a fancy name, wrap it in gloss, and spin a good yarn. And Kimi was the best at that. Maybe because he’d never actually used a single product he’d sold. Or maybe because he genuinely believed: not believing in the product doesn’t stop you from selling it. It even helps.
While he was giving his interview, someone behind him tipped over a shelf of "anti-stress notebooks" – they fluttered to the floor with the dull rustle of cheap paper – and the sales department spontaneously celebrated a three-unit order of identical sets from the same company. Balloons popped – blown up during someone’s lunch break – with a crackle like gunfire. Someone yelled "woohoo!", someone else screamed "who took my yogurt from the fridge?", and the two shouts merged into a general hum that, anywhere else, would have signaled the start of a riot. Kimi just shrugged.
"Kimi, you freaking Antonelli! I’m going to kill you!" came a voice, audible even through the closed meeting room door.
Lando Norris, another employee with whom Kimi had a running feud and whose desk was right next to his, had just fallen victim to the younger man’s latest prank. It was unclear why they were even at odds, seeing as their sales were the only thing keeping the place afloat. Maybe that was exactly why – they were too similar, but each thought he was the original. Their desks sat side-by-side, separated only by a frosted plastic divider on which Kimi had already drawn three caricatures of Lando. Lando hadn't noticed yet.
"What happened?" Lando sat across from the interviewers, his face a mask of displeasure. His hands were clenched into fists; he rocked slightly in his chair, like a man trying to hold back from murder. "That… 'comic genius'… replaced my office mug."
Lando sits, leaning forward slightly, staring straight into the camera. His eyes are narrowed, his jaw tight. In his hand, an empty mug, which he grips as if it were Kimi's neck. His expression is a mix of hurt, fury, and quiet disbelief that reality could be this absurd.
Lando: (nods toward the door, where Kimi remains in the meeting room) I take a sip. (Pause. He relives the moment.) And it's… salt. Just salt. You get it? Not sugar, not a water prank, not coffee substitute – but granulated, mother-freaking, salt. Sea salt? Table salt? I don't care. It was everywhere. On my tongue, on my palate, in my soul. (Pause. Glares at the mug.) I almost coughed up a lung. Literally. I was hacking so hard, accounting turned around. Oscar looked up. That's serious, you know? Oscar never looks up.
Lando pauses. Runs a hand over his face, as if wiping away the memory.
Lando: And that guy… is sitting in the meeting room, smiling. (Turns to camera, lowers his voice to a threatening whisper.) He winked at me through the glass. I saw it. He doesn't even have the decency to look away.
Lando falls silent for a moment, as if remembering something crucial, something that makes the story even more traumatic.
Lando: Three hours. (Holds up three fingers.) Three hours I drank water from the cooler. Cold. Tasteless. Bland. Accounting was watching me – all three of them, including Fernando, who never looks at anyone. They were silent. I know what they were thinking. 'Lando Norris, top salesman last month, swishing water by the cooler.' Humiliating. (Squeezes the mug.) And you know what the worst part is? He never once apologized. Not a text. No emoji. Not even a half-hearted 'oops, sorry about that.' Nothing. But this morning, he put a new mug on my desk. (Pulls out a bright yellow mug from under the table, with the words "World's okayest employee" printed on it, the text crooked, done on a cheap printer.) Here. I'm not using it. Don't even ask. It'll sit here as a reminder. That I didn't break.
Lando puts the mug on the table in front of him. Looks at it. With hatred. But doesn't put it away.
Interview: Kimi Antonelli
Kimi sits, leaned back in his chair, a light, almost lazy smile on his face. Arms crossed over his chest. He looks like he's been asked why grass is green – and he knows the answer but doesn't see the point in explaining. In his eyes is that special spark you see in people who know, with absolute certainty, that they won't be fired. Because they bring in profit.
Kimi: Conflict? (Short laugh.) There's no conflict. (A brief pause, during which he looks to the side, as if checking that Lando isn't coming with a knife.) We're best friends. He just doesn't know it yet.
Kimi notices it sounds weird – too sweet, even for him – but doesn't correct it. He likes it when people can't tell if he's joking or serious.
Kimi: I love him so much. In my own way. The Antonelli way. (Looks toward the meeting room, where Lando is gesturing wildly, arguing with the printer.) Just look at that. Could a person who doesn't feel deep affection adjust his chair settings by half a centimeter every day? Every. Single. Day. That's care. Subtle. Unobtrusive. At the patella level.
Kimi winks at the camera. The gesture is perfectly rehearsed – he does it at the end of every interview, like a signature.
Meanwhile, behind the meeting room glass, the real, flesh-and-blood Kimi stuck his tongue out at Lando – just for a split second, fast, childish – then immediately pretended to adjust his tie. He wasn't wearing a tie. The documentarists caught it on camera and somehow decided it would be the best shot of the whole film. They had no idea how many such shots were yet to come.
The film crew never quite figured out if they were making a documentary, a comedy, or a dystopia. At "Happy Monday inc.," nobody seemed to care either. The only argument was over who would bring coffee.
The company, however – if it was even holding together at all – rested on one person. Nico Rosberg: a man in his forties with a strange sense of humor and a highly peculiar understanding of corporate spirit. No one really knew how or under what circumstances he'd become the branch manager. He just… was. Sure, there were rumors – whispered in the smoking area (which didn't exist, so they smoked on the fire escape) – about him having a special relationship with the head office boss, Lewis Hamilton. But even that was highly debatable. Because rumor had it, everyone had a special relationship with Lewis. No one knew what that meant. But it sounded mysterious.
Nico showed up at the office at exactly 9:15 AM (never 9:00 – that would be too predictable, and Nico hated predictability), with his ever-present cup of Americano and the look of a man who'd just solved all the world's problems but forgotten which ones. His jacket was always unbuttoned, his shirt collar crumpled, his hair slightly ruffled, as if he'd just stepped out of a convertible with the top down, even if it was raining. He could spend half an hour talking about synergy and vertical integration – with such a straight face that no one dared ask if he understood those words himself – and then suddenly declare a company pajama party because "it's cloudy outside, and productivity must be boosted by any means necessary." And employees brought pajamas. Because Nico knew how to persuade. Or because nobody really cared.
Today, Nico stood by his office door, shoulder propped against the frame, watching Lando shake salt out of his mug straight into the trash can (the salt flew everywhere because Lando was shaking it too aggressively), while Kimi pretended to be busy restacking "anti-stress notebooks" on shelves (actually, he was just moving the same three notebooks back and forth, creating the illusion of frantic activity).
"Great work, team," Nico said, addressing no one in particular. His voice was even, almost soothing – like a weatherman reporting a storm warning with the same tone he'd use for partly cloudy skies. "I feel the drive. The tension. This is exactly how big sales are born."
He disappeared behind the door with the hand-lettered "Director" sign (he'd made it himself – from cardboard and tape, because he couldn't be bothered to order a real one), leaving the employees even more bewildered than usual. Lando froze, mug in hand. Kimi froze, notebook in hand. No one knew what to do next. So everyone went back to work. Or whatever it was each of them considered work.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/85027971/chapters/224487921#workskin
