A quiet room before the wheel spins

You know that moment at a work party, right after the official part ends. The music is a bit too low, and everyone is just standing there, holding their drinks a little too carefully. It’s not uncomfortable, exactly, but it’s waiting for something to happen.

The hum of a room waiting

I remember glancing around, seeing a few people checking their phones. Someone made a joke that landed softly, and the laughter faded a little too quickly. We were all colleagues, but in that lull, we felt like strangers sharing a very quiet elevator.That’s when someone pulled out their phone and said they had this silly wheel app. No one really knew what it was for, but it was something to look at besides the floor. It was just a colorful circle on a screen, but it gave us all a focal point.

When the first spin lands

The first prompt was something simple, like ‘toast the person to your left.’ It wasn’t a command, more like a suggestion the room could choose to follow. The guy next to me just grinned, raised his glass, and said ‘to surviving the quarterly report.’It broke the seal. The next spin felt less like a random event and more like a game we’d all silently agreed to play. The prompts were just excuses, really. Excuses to ask a silly question, to tell a short story from a project, to give a compliment you’d normally keep to yourself.

The shift in the air

You could feel the conversation start to weave itself together, moving from isolated pairs into a looser, shared circle.

No one was keeping score

It was never about the drinking. It was about having a gentle nudge, a reason to turn to the person you only ever email.By the third or fourth spin, the wheel was almost forgotten. The laughter was louder, the stories were flowing, and that heavy quiet had completely evaporated. We were just people at a party then, the work titles left safely at the door.