my favorite & fluffiest coworker

My favorite coworker is also the fluffiest. He keeps me accountable to the little things that add up to the big things—getting out of bed each morning, breathing in some fresh air, laying on the floor to give belly rubs after a stressful client meeting. He brings levity to the monotony by video-bombing each and every Zoom meeting, so much so that my team has created a custom emoji of him in our Slack workspace. On the bad days, his heterochromatic eyes emanate love and solidarity. I work as a senior project manager at Twilio, a tech company in the customer engagement space, and Bennett is my assistant, office manager, Chief Happiness Officer, and two-year-old rescue pup.

Among his other job responsibilities, Bennett reminds me daily of one important truth: work is just work. When he rests his head on my lap, I’m put in my place again, oriented and rooted in the grand scheme of it all. Work is a big part of life, sure, but it's not the whole thing. Work can be meaningful and important and valuable, and it can be mundane and stressful and trivial. While I love my job, it helps me to remember that it’s not life or death. An old manager once told me that in the tech space “no one is on the operating table” and Bennett reflects that back to me on every hard day. It’s not to say our work in tech doesn’t matter, but it matters a whole lot less than many professions and many things: for one, the way Bennett holds his rubber bone in the doorway and silently begs me to play. The jubilee of an off-leash romp in the hills or a sunset paddleboard session. The sweet puppy snores after a long day of being alive, simply existing and showing up in the world, recharging and ready to do it again tomorrow.

When we rescued this sick, sweet little pup in Utah in January 2020, we had no idea what the next 18+ months would hold. We went from train commutes and obedience training to being together all day, every day, always. When my partner/co-pawrent started going back into a physical workplace last summer, it became just Bennett and me in the home office, and the separation anxiety became a lot more mutual. He met my coworkers and most of my clients (intentionally or not), he joined every Zoom happy hour and book club, he became my warm and shaggy anchor in the vast sea of unmooring isolation and overwhelming upheaval. He became my default conversation starter, whether it was with his spontaneous play-growls that sound like a dinosaur cow in the background of a client meeting or a fluffy tail wag in the background of a video call. Sorry if you can hear my dog in the background, by which I really mean you’re welcome. Have some joy today, it doesn’t have to be serious, we can laugh a little. It’s all a gift.

It’s such a cliché to say “my dog rescued me” so instead I’ll say this: nearly every moment of quotidian delight and hope in the past 18 months has been thanks to Bennett. In the early pandemic days when my daily routine was in shambles (no commute, no gym, no happy hours, no social dinners downtown, no author talks, no community gatherings), taking care of Bennett was my best reminder to take care of myself. I would begrudgingly drag myself outside in the morning to walk him around the block and inevitably feel a bit more ready to face the day as we circled back home. I would refill his water bowl and make myself drink a glass of my own. He would eat (very enthusiastically) and I would be reminded to do the same, to nourish my body without shame or guilt as I tried to muster even a sliver of his enthusiasm for the same old sh*t.

When my work life blurred dangerously into my home life and I couldn’t identify a single moment of the day when I allowed myself to meaningfully disconnect from my job stressors, Bennett once again became my respite and joy as I created a ritual to end my workday by taking him for a walk. This became our new house rule: when I get back from my afternoon or evening walk with the dog, I’m not allowed to work anymore. With this new routine, my workday had a marked end, a fixed conclusion, a space for a bit more life to creep in again, even in the pandemic winter days when “life” was mostly popping an edible and watching the latest reality TV show (then: The Circle. now: Below Deck: Med). When my depression worsened and I couldn’t do anything but lay on the floor between meetings, Bennett would join me right there, sometimes licking my face or dropping a tennis ball in my hand, or often just placing his paw or his chin on my legs. What profound empathy to show up in these ways, to be in it with me, to gently drag me out of the depths of myself with a playful game of tug-o-war.

So this one's for you, Bennett—my Chief Happiness Officer, office manager, empawyee of the month, best bud, and favorite coworker all wrapped up in one. Here’s to many more workdays full of zoomies on Zoom calls.