My Boss Asked Me to 'Vibe Check' a Spreadsheet at 11 PM
It was my first week reporting to a new manager named Marcus. He was the kind of guy who didn't just use buzzwords; he lived in a dialect entirely composed of them. He was a 'circling back' professional, a man who treated every trivial email interaction like a high-stakes diplomatic summit. He kept a tiny, struggling succulent on the corner of his mahogany desk, and he had named it Greg. Whenever he felt stressed, he would gently tap the pot and whisper to the plant, like he was consulting a miniature mentor. He had come from a fast-paced startup that had famously folded in eleven months, a failure he always described as a 'good run.' He was a master of the corporate vernacular. He would suggest we 'socialize' the idea of a new coffee brand for the breakroom or 'operationalize' our strategy for finding a parking spot in the overcrowded lot. I was hired as a financial analyst, a role that usually requires a quiet, methodical approach to data. But with Marcus, nothing was ever quiet or methodical. It was always a performance. One night, I was sitting on my couch in my sweatpants, mindlessly scrolling through my phone while a documentary played softly on the television in the background. My phone buzzed on the coffee table at 11:14 PM. A Slack notification popped up. It was Marcus. 'hey — can you vibe check the Q3 projections? just want to make sure the energy is right before the board sees them.' I stared at the message for a long time, my eyes tracing the glowing letters against the dark background of my living room. I looked up at the ceiling, wondering if I had somehow misread the word 'projections.' I am a financial analyst. I deal in hard facts, cell references, and long-term fiscal forecasting. The file he sent was a standard grid of numbers—sales growth, operational costs, profit margins, and tax liabilities. There was no 'energy' in it. There were no vibes. It was just a cold, logical spreadsheet, accompanied by a post-it note scanned into the margin that I am fairly certain he wrote himself, which simply said, 'Make it shine.' I sat there for ten minutes, watching the cursor blink on my screen. I didn't want to explain that a spreadsheet is a mathematical reality, not a mood ring. I realized that arguing would only lead to a 'sync' that would last for hours. I typed back, 'the energy is bullish.' I hit send, tossed my phone onto the couch cushion, and turned off the lights. I slept surprisingly well. The next morning, when I arrived at the office, the screen on my laptop showed a notification from him. It was a single word: 'exactly.' He never asked me to look at a single number in that document again. He never brought it up during our weekly touchpoints, nor did he ask for a summary of the data points. The numbers were sent to the board exactly as they were. The board members, as it turned out, were apparently pleased with the energy. The quarter went fine. That was eight months ago. Since then, the job has transformed into something I never could have expected when I signed my contract. I have become the office vibe-checker. I have vibe-checked a procurement report, a fifty-page legal contract, a sensitive layoff memo, and an org chart that I am almost certain had a glaring typo in the reporting lines. The process is always the same. He sends the file, I wait a reasonable amount of time to make it look like I am performing some sort of intense analysis, and then I reply with something confident but entirely vague. 'The narrative flow is strong,' I might say, or 'The trajectory feels perfectly aligned with our Q4 vision.' Every single time, he replies with that same word: 'exactly.' It is a strange, quiet power that I hold, a power that runs entirely on the confidence of a man who doesn't actually want to read what he is sending. It has become a rhythmic part of my life, a recurring test of how little effort I can exert while still appearing as if I am providing a high-level service. I don't know if I have a real job anymore, or if I am just a cog in a machine that runs on empty praise and blind faith. Sometimes I wonder if he knows what I am doing, or if he is just as tired of the corporate theatre as I am. But then he will say 'exactly' with such sincere conviction that I lose my nerve to ask him what he actually wants. The dynamic took a dark turn in month four when Greg the plant finally gave up the ghost. I watched the leaves shrivel and turn brown over the course of a week, and Marcus didn't seem to notice until the whole thing tilted over in its pot. I said nothing. I didn't mention that the succulent was dead, even when he looked at it with a puzzled expression. A few days later, a new, vibrant plant appeared on his desk. He named it Greg II. I was standing by his desk when he set it down. He looked at me, leaned back in his chair, and gestured to the new plant. 'What do you think? Does it fit the space?' I paused, looked at the plant, and thought about all the hours I had spent typing lies into Slack about spreadsheets and legal contracts. I looked him in the eye and said, 'The energy is very prickly.' He nodded slowly, clearly impressed by my insight, and whispered, 'Exactly.' We both looked at the plant in silence for a moment, two people adrift in an office full of paper and fake plants, both of us pretending that the world made sense. I walked back to my desk, opened my email, and waited for the next document to arrive. I wondered if I would ever break the cycle, or if I would be checking vibes until the end of time. I suppose as long as the board is happy, it really doesn't matter. It is a strange, hollow existence, but the pay is consistent and the expectations are non-existent. I spend my days scrolling through spreadsheets that I know by heart, occasionally adding a comment about the 'vibe' just to keep the game going. Sometimes I imagine what would happen if I replied with something like, 'This report is a disaster and contains three major accounting errors.' Would he still say 'exactly'? Would he even read it? I think about it often, but I never do it. It is too easy to be the person who says 'exactly.' It is much harder to be the person who tries to find the truth in a place that has decided it prefers the performance. So I keep the charade alive. I check the vibes, I collect my paycheck, and I try not to think about the fact that Greg II is likely already starting to wilt. I wonder if there will be a Greg III, and if I will have to find a new way to describe its energy. I imagine that by the time we reach Greg V, I will have run out of adjectives. But until then, I will keep circling back, socializing the truth, and making sure that the energy is always, somehow, exactly right.