You wait in line with your coworkers. You can't really call them friends yet, you don't really know anything about them. Maybe you should fix that. These two are the only people you interacted with beyond a random first meeting, after all.

You ask for a double portion of whatever's on the menu. The slop provided for dinner changes from day to day but it's never any good. This time, you're given a pile of obviously microwaved sloppy joe mix stuffed into some Hawaiian rolls.
Lucy gets a sad tray of corn, pudding and mushy peas straight out of a hospital kitchen.

You toss the extra sloppy joes onto the Man's trade. He is incredibly thankful that he has you to get this stuff for him. It's not really much but you're glad you're making someone's day at least.

The three of you search around for Liz and, uh, what's her name? Noelle? No, wait, it was Nicole. It's not hard to find the two, especially when Nicole is waving you over. You bite the bullet and suppress any memories of your sperg out only a day or so ago.

Your group sits down at the table. You mimic what a normal human's face should look like. Your smile is beyond forced but it's better than acknowledging your fuck up.
Nicole matches your forced smile with her own, "It's reassuring to see that the two of you are safe and sound! I even heard you completed your first sponsorship!!! A mutual ACQUAINTANCE of ours should deliver your hard-fought bounty soon enough!"

"How do you know-" You shake your head. "You know what, thank you!"
"It is no problem, Vincent! See, it's nice to establish a connection between two parties in order to mutually benefit each other, is it not?" She speaks as if she said something coherent. "That's exactly why ARC probably likely hired you. Because of your impressive work ethic!" Her words stink of hollow, meaningless corporate fluff.

"Nick." Liz awkwardly enters the conversation. If you didn't know any better, you thought she's worried about you. "Give him some space, okay?"

Nicole blankly stares at her friend. She gets the hint and shuts up.

"Uh. Thanks."
"Sorry, she's always like that, haa." Liz scratches at the back of her neck. "Just wanted to make sure you and Liz are okay."

"O-oh! I-it wasn't half bad w-working for him. W-we did a lot of sample s-studying. N-nothing I couldn't handle."

Liz lets out a sigh of relief. "Good, good. Glad you're treating her well, Vince."
"Yeah." You mutter out. You force your smile back on. "We would like to talk about something I think you could help us with."

The Man is too busy eating his food to add anything to the conversation (even if he wasn't invisible to everyone besides you.)

"Oh, sure, what's up?" You can tell the smile's worrying her but you rather keep your guard up around these two.
"U-uh. It's about s-someone on Layer 3. T-the supply manager. He hasn't been doing a good job."

Nicole's plastic smile rots away almost immediately. "That's the eleventh complaint this week."