Perfect. Whoever tried and failed to identify the source of the butt-dial put the design department at the top of their suspect list along with shipping; this way, I’ll have interaction with both.
I can’t imagine this taking more than a day or two. People always give me what I want.
I’m told the CEO himself will bring me a binder. With that, I’m left at the design department, which is a large room with garish lighting and rows upon rows of cubicles like a movie set.
A woman with dark hair and a 1940s-looking outfit introduces herself as Renata and leads me back, saying things about the department that I’m not listening to, because the whole place is a sea of cubicles. People actually sit in cubicles? I thought that was just in movies.
The soundtrack is like a movie too, what with the low murmur of voices and the clatter of keyboards punctuated by soft beeps. Is this actually real?
Renata pauses to introduce me to a petite blonde woman with doll-like features and pencils stuck willy-nilly into her messy bun. “This is Jada. She’s our senior designer.”
Jada assesses me with a piercing gaze, spine erect, making the most of her short stature. Whereas Renata and the HR guy struggled awkwardly not to stare at my mole, Jada looks me clear in the eyes, as if to size me up. “Glad to have you here, Jack,” she says. “We’ve been so short-staffed—thank goodness they sent someone to help.”
I snort. “Someone to help might be overstating things.”
“Hah,” Renata says. “You’ll totally be helpful, I know it.”
“No, wait, I want to know what that means.” Jada fixes me with a big frown. “Might be overstating it? Are you not here to help?”
I fix her with a lighthearted smile. So I’ve met the resident humorless control freak, I think.
“Not if I can avoid it,” I say.
Jada’s delicious frown deepens to a moue of disgust. I should try to move on and meet the rest of the people, but I’m unable. It’s almost a physical impossibility. She is exactly the kind of person I cannot stand, and she can’t stand me, and it’s delightful.
I answer her frown with an even bigger smile, and her annoyance is a thing to behold.
“Great. Just what we need.” She takes a seat and goes back to it, tapping angrily.
“Oh, come on, I think you’re a big joker, Jack,” Renata says loudly.
Jada grumbles and keeps typing. Jada’s obviously not the butt-dialer, but Renata might be.
“Come on, then.” Renata leads me back to a cubicle a bit behind Jada’s and futzes with a computer from another decade. “I’m logging you into the intranet. Your username is your name with no spaces and your password is password, no caps.” She steps aside and looks at me expectantly. “Home sweet home.”
“This is where I sit?” I ask.
“Where else?”
“An actual cubicle,” I say.
Renata laughs. “Only the best here at SportyGoCo!”
“Guys!” Jada twists around and says something about an alert or being alert; that one short, sharp command has the entire office hushed up. That is some serious buzzkill control freak power right there.
“Look alert!” Renata tells me before settling into her own cubicle across the row.
Jada gives me an intense stare, then twists back around to her monitor.
It’s here I notice that a head of short dark hair has appeared at the far end, but that’s all I can see thanks to the fact that I’m in a cubicle of all things. The head approaches. Soon there’s a pair of beady eyes and strangely shiny cheeks.
Yet another office buzzkill—that’s clear right away.
My handler, Renata, pipes up. “This is Jack Smith, our new office-gopher-slash-delivery assistant. We’ve just been settling him in. Jack, this is your new boss, Bert Johnston, CEO of SportyGoCo.”
Bert glares at me and my mole in the most annoyed way possible, as if it is actively offending him. There truly is no end to the delight of my new mole.
“Apparently somebody from corporate saw fit to transfer you here, Mr. Smith, not that we have the need or the want, but here you are.” He slams down a three-ring binder. “Company Code of Conduct. I advise you to study it well. And if you take a look at the home folder on your desktop, you’ll find a PDF with the orientation materials and a link to the training video. I suggest you start there.”
He stares at me, seeming to wait for me to do something. “Got it,” I say.
Still he waits. “Any day now, Mr. Smith.”
Does he want me to look at these things now? I turn to the screen and identify the PDF in question and open it up, shocked to see that the thing is over 200 pages long. He points at a link on the screen. I open the video; it has a runtime of over an hour.
Is this some kind of a joke? Who reads things this long? Or watches things that long? Bert stands there still.
“Well? Have you prepared an executive summary?” I ask.
Bert looks at me incredulously. “Excuse me?”
“An executive summary. A shortened version that you would prepare with just the highlights for me to peruse,” I explain.
“What do you think this is?” he barks. “No, I did not prepare an executive summary for you. You will read through this entire package. You will watch the video on a speed of one point zero. Is this understood?”
I stare at him, torn between laughing and firing him. But it comes to me that neither of these are good choices if I want to conceal my identity long enough to unmask the butt-dialer.
“Understood?” he demands once again.
“Oh, very much so,” I say, trying not to grin. It’s hard with him so upset. This man is actually yelling at me. People do this?
“It’s not optional.”
“I can see that,” I say.
Bert scrutinizes me as if he’s waiting for something more. It’s excruciating, not so much in terms of pain, but just that I am allergic to authority figures and already this job has given me two of them—Control Freak Barbie and now this guy.
What now? What is he waiting for?
“Uh, that’ll be all, then,” I say with a wave. “You’re dismissed.” This is what I habitually say when I want people to get out of my face, but I know it’s the wrong thing even before the gasp goes up from the sea of cubicles, even before Bert’s cheeks turn an alarming shade of deep pink.
“Excuse me?” Bert thunders.
This is the wrong time to smile, but I can’t help it. He’s so angry! Charley was right. Blending into an office is no easy matter.
Bert stabs the finger onto the three-ring binder. “In the rules and regs binder, Mr. Smith, you will learn about demerits. If you get three demerits, you will be fired. The insubordination that you just demonstrated has earned you one demerit.”
“You just gave me a demerit?” Is it possible he’s joking? I’ve never had a boss, unless you count my father, though that usually ended in fists flying between us and me on the ground. Until I got into my teens, at any rate.
“And you’ll find yourself with yet another demerit if you don’t wipe that smile off your face,” he says.
“Wipe the smile off my face?” People say that?
“And there’s demerit number two. Are you going to go for three?”