That morning, Marina wanted only two simple things: to survive the weekly online meeting quietly and finish her coffee while it still remembered being hot. She sat at her kitchen table, opened her laptop, and placed the new company microphone beside her. The IT guy had ceremoniously called it “a solution for clear communication.” In corporate life, that usually means something is about to develop a personality.

When her manager asked Marina for a quick project update, the microphone transmitted a rich, confident purr instead of her voice. Marina’s cat, Plushka, had rubbed his cheek against it at exactly that moment, and the noise-canceling system had apparently decided that humans were a passing trend while the cat was the real subject-matter expert. The chat immediately lit up with: “Thanks, Marina, we can hear there are certain risks.” Flustered, she reached to mute herself, hit a spoon, and sent it into her cup, which then tipped straight onto the keyboard.

The laptop took offense and began turning everything on at once: screen sharing, captions, and some filter that transformed Marina into a potato wearing glasses. Without blinking, her manager said, “Thank you for visualizing the team’s workload.” To stop it all, Marina yanked out the microphone, but also disconnected the docking station, and the big shared screen froze on one final frame: Plushka sitting proudly in front of the camera under the automatic caption, “Marina presents.”

Two minutes later, Marina rejoined from her phone, now without special effects and without illusions. Her manager said it had been “the liveliest quarterly update so far” and asked her to send the slides. Marina honestly sent a screenshot of the cat. Since then, the microphone has lived in a drawer, and Plushka seems to be waiting for a promotion.