And by Meagan Dalton, summer intern from Douglas S. Freeman High School in Henrico County, Virginia

The Progressive Insurance lady got laid off today. Unable to comprehend what had happened to her, Flo was forcibly escorted from her angular, sterilized, hospital-like Progressive store. As the door was shutting in her face, she was heard to say, “Helping you save money no matter what you drive. Now that’s progress—”

Some months from now you will, no doubt, pass her in an alley, her once-spotless apron ragged and stained, her “tricked-out nametag” stolen by a crackhead who pawned it for $3 and a Slim Jim. And when you ask how she is doing, she will tell you how to save a bundle on your homeowner’s insurance when Progressive insures your car.

Flo is, in fact, still gainfully employed, but imagine this scenario. Isn’t it just what would happen?

Think about it. We never see Flo outside the store. She’s never spoken of anything but Progressive Insurance, which seems to occupy her mind entirely. Having no life apart from the company, it would be impossible for her to adjust to any other existence. She’d just wander, babbling on, till she keeled over.

Fans have declared their romantic and, yes, sexual designs on Flo, but even the most wistful necessarily describe her in mechanical terms. In The American Statesmen, Chris Garcia praised her thus:

She’s bubbly and beaming, high-volume, with a flip of dark hair and a face like a lollipop. She irks as she endears, bemuses as she bewitches. She’s a bundle of energetic contradictions, bursting here, retracting there. Her expressions blink and change like a neon sign. Her eyes are popping globes.

Here, subtly and most likely, unconsciously, her true nature is revealed. Despite the contrived quirkiness, Flo is a complete and utter corporate drone. She’s the ultimate “motivated self-starter,” a sort of Stepford employee. As such, she constitutes an organizational Freudian slip, in which Progressive unwittingly reveals what it really desires in its employees.

Now that’s reactionary.