The Velvet Coffin

The best trap doesn’t look like a trap. It looks like belonging.

The company was genuinely good for a long time. The people were real. The work mattered. The holiday parties were good. Someone always brought that one dish everyone fought over.

And at some point — nobody can say exactly when — it stopped being what it was and started being what it needed you to think it still was.

The culture stayed warm. The decisions got cold. The gap between the two is the velvet lining of the coffin. You don’t feel the walls closing because the walls feel nice.

The people who left early felt it. They couldn’t name it — just a sense that the temperature had changed. The ones who stayed told themselves the good parts meant something. The good parts always meant something. But the building doesn’t run on potlucks.