Chapter Six
Six
The lunchroom was abuzz with playful chatter and clanking dishes. Phoebe had invited me to sit with her, but I needed a moment to collect myself. The bathroom line was long, so I turned around and walked to the lunchroom clutching my plastic-wrapped bologna sandwich. Gary Horowitz scared me. What had I gotten myself into? He talked so fast that my hand was barely able to catch up as I took notes on a legal pad. They weren’t decipherable. They were so messy it was like looking at the Zodiac Killer’s letters.
Gary also gave me a stack of past-due bills, half-started department budgets, and a presentation that he needed to have turned around by tomorrow afternoon. I’d never done an executive presentation before! He said that I was supposed to take my laptop home with me and back as part of their security protocols. I interpreted that as I needed to work all night and figure out how to make a flashy executive presentation because this was a test. I was determined not to fail, but it was a lot to throw at me in four hours. Lisa, who came in shortly after Gary ditched me in the morning, was no help.
The break room was huge, and the back wall was lined entirely with windows. I spotted Phoebe in the crowd. She was sitting across from Danuwoa, and he looked like he was leaning. You know, like he was leaning into her. Perhaps Phoebe and Danuwoa had a thing? I walked up with as much confidence as I could muster, because no way was I going to be eating alone here. I swear Gary looked pissed that it was lunchtime, because he had to stop talking and adding to my to-do list. No doubt he would zero in on me if he caught me eating alone, and I needed a break.
“Hey, guys, is this seat taken?” Both shook their heads and inched their lunch bags over to give me more room at the table.
“How’s your first day going?” Phoebe asked, all smiles.
“Does Gary always talk that much?”
“Pffft!” Danuwoa snickered and then started coughing. “Ahem, sorry. He hasn’t been able to keep an assistant for longer than a month.”
“For fuck’s sake. Are you serious?”
“Shut up, Dan, you’re gonna scare her away, and I like her.” Phoebe threw a wadded-up napkin in his face.
“The devil himself couldn’t scare me away. I need the money.”
“From your lips to god’s ears.” Danuwoa scooped his yogurt into his mouth. “This is Oklahoma, we all need the money.”
“Says the guy who was able to buy a house.” Phoebe rolled her eyes.
“I don’t waste my money on shoes and purses,” he said, pointing his plastic spoon at Phoebe.
“Wow, do I detect a bit of sexism there?” I asked as I took a large bite of my sandwich, waiting to see what kind of guy Danuwoa really was.
“No, he’s right. I can’t resist a deal.” She lifted her leg and plopped her ankle on the table, wiggling her foot to show off her cheetah-print mules. “I got these babies at the consignment store.”
“Those are cute,” I mumbled behind my hand as my tongue performed acrobatics. The white bread stuck to the roof of my mouth, and no way was I going to stick my finger in there to pry it off.
“Aren’t they? I can show you the store one of these days if you want.”
“I’d love that.”
All the chatter and clanking of dishes ceased as the energy was completely sucked out of the room. I followed everyone’s stares to a heavily pregnant woman on her cell phone opening a frozen dinner by the microwave.
Danuwoa rolled his eyes. “I gotta go hide.” He grabbed the remainder of his food and darted out of the lunchroom.
“What was that all about?” I asked Phoebe. Did Danuwoa have beef with the pregnant lady?
“That’s Natalie Sanchez, the executive assistant to our CEO, Mr. Stevenson. Also known as the Wicked Witch of Floor Seventeen.”
Everyone in the lunchroom gave her a wide berth and avoided direct eye contact. What did she do to these people?
I guess I asked that out loud, because Phoebe answered me. “She has the eyes of a hawk and doesn’t let anyone get away with shit. She can just tell if someone is using their work computer for social media or online shopping. She triple-checks every report or presentation before it can cross Mr. Stevenson’s desk. If you want to move up in this company, then you have to kiss her ass and make sure you cross all your t’s and dot all your i’s. Oh, and never, ever slip up. She’ll never forget it.” Phoebe sent Natalie a glare and said under her breath, “Spiteful woman.”
“What has she not let you forget—if it’s not prying, of course?”
“She’s going on maternity leave, and the company announced they were looking for a temporary replacement and anyone interested was encouraged to apply. I applied. She sat in on my interview. I never heard back, so I asked her about it in the bathroom, and she told me I wasn’t right for the role. Can you believe that? I demanded she tell me what I was lacking, and she said she had observed me on several occasions abandoning my post and thought I was lazy and lacked attention to detail to keep our supplies stocked.” Phoebe huffed and crossed her arms. “As if the reception desk was the check-in at the emergency room. I’m allowed to go to the bathroom or get coffee in the break room. She has standards that no one can live up to.”
I recalled this morning when a frazzled Phoebe was throwing my welcome bag together at the last minute and only had men’s shirts left, but I didn’t want to judge her too harshly. “Is this your endgame career?” I asked, genuinely curious. How did other people who had been working in this corporate environment plan ahead? How did they advance?
“God no. I hope to meet a handsome man with money in this building, get pregnant right away, and become a stay-at-home mom.”
We laughed together. That was some dream. Not my dream, but I got that it was what others aspired to. I never wanted to be in a position where someone controlled me and my money. No, thank you. Call it generational trauma and whatnot. No man was gonna keep my shit from me.
I finished my sandwich, and before long it was time for me to return to my desk. I walked through the door, and Monica waved me down from her cubicle.
“Ember! How’s your first day going?”
“It’s been busy.” I sat in the seat she offered me across from her desk.
“I bet. I know Gary has a lot to do before we can close this month’s books. Why don’t you have a seat? I have a few things to give you.”
Monica’s cubicle was lived-in. Children’s art was pinned to the gray fabric walls, and she had a family photo with her husband and four children. It was adorable. I was certain that it was weird that it was my dream to have a cubicle as lived-in as Monica’s one day. Most people did not dream of pushing paper surrounded by fake walls, but I was not like most people. I was a recovering poor person, and a well-loved, decorated workspace meant stability, longevity, and steady income. I hungered for it. Cute family photos would be an added bonus.
Monica counted through a packet of papers. “This is everything. This small packet is Technix’s electronic asset policy. I just need you to tear out and sign the last page saying that you acknowledge the laptop is company property and in the event of your termination or resignation, it will be returned promptly.”
“You got it.” I signed my name with a flourish and handed the torn page to her.
“Excellent. Next up is the employee handbook. It outlines our policies on dress code, communications, zero tolerance behavior, and interoffice dating.”
“Interoffice dating?”
“To summarize—don’t. We don’t need the mess or headache. The policy outlines it all and the proper steps and disclosures.” She gave me a no-nonsense look through her eyebrows, like she had said it before and people had not heeded her warning.
“Right, not worth the trouble. Noted.” I was not going to be one of those people. I planned on keeping my job. Danuwoa was off-limits.
“I’ve already sent you a link to the mandatory training modules that you need to complete this week. It’s all standard anti-discrimination and anti-harassment videos with short quizzes at the end. You need at least seventy percent on the quizzes, or you have to rewatch the videos.”
“I’ll pass them the first time, no problem.”
“That’s the spirit. I’m sure Gary has given you a million things to work on, so I’ll let you go. If you need anything, my door is always open.”
“Is that because you don’t have a door?”
“Well, yeah, but I also care about everyone’s well-being.” Monica giggled.
I got back to my desk to look at the training videos, but my heart stopped. In my inbox was an invitation to my first-ever business meeting. The title just read Accounting All Hands . I clicked accept and smiled. I was about to do some really business-y things in thirty minutes in the CN conference room. I stood and looked over my desk. Lisa, the senior accountant, was sitting in her seat, looking at her computer screen and eating a sandwich.
“Hi.” I got her attention.
“Hi?”
“What does CN conference room mean?”
“Chuck Norris conference room,” she said through a full mouth. I could see her mashed-up egg salad sandwich. Gross.
“What?”
“It’s the largest conference room on the other side of the break room.”
“Why is it called Chuck Norris?”
“Because it’s the largest conference room.”
When I didn’t say anything, she added, “It wasn’t my dumb joke.” Lisa rolled her eyes and went back to eating her sandwich.
Okies and our love for our own.
—
The conference room was huge with tables put together to form a large U shape in front of a projector screen. As with the rest of the office, it was bright white with tones of contrasting gray. I took a seat on the farthest side of the room and waited to see what all hands meant.
Lisa walked in and sat opposite me. We didn’t say anything to each other as the minutes ticked by. Gary swooped in with a paper cup of coffee filled to the brim. On his heels, three young men followed. Gary set his closed laptop and coffee down on the table in front of the screen while the three men sat in the back next to each other, their backs to the wall of windows.
Gary kicked off the meeting. “Okay, everyone, thanks for coming on such short notice. I want to introduce you to our newest member on the accounting team, Ember.”
This was an overly large room for just six people. My awkward wave was met with a lackluster response. One of the guys in the back, the one in the middle of two jock-looking guys, gave me a half smile. He was maybe thirty with black hair perfectly brushed over in a small swoop.
“Ember,” Gary continued, “you’ve met Lisa. In the back, we have Martin, our director of accounts payable. In the middle is Nick, senior accounting manager for accounts receivable. And lastly, Ryan, our new staff accountant. He was promoted from your position not too long ago.”
“Good luck,” Ryan deadpanned. Only Martin and Nick chuckled.
“All right, great. With Ember, you now can give her the tasks you need help with, and we should be able to wrap up the month’s end on time. Any questions?”
“Yeah, how much work can we give her? I’m really behind after we shut down Portland.” Ryan was a little too eager to pass off his work to me.
“That’s up to you. Her priority is to finish my tasks, and then you let Ember know what needs to be done and by when, and we can all work together to get it finished.”
Ember is sitting right here . It took all my self-restraint to refrain from eye-rolling. Gary moved on from introductions and started talking about what was needed to wrap up the month and finalize everything related to the Portland closure. My notepad page was once again full of notes to myself like Google bank reconciliation and What does provisioning for an audit mean?
The meeting ended, with promises from Ryan, Martin, and Nick to send me things to “keep me busy.” As if I needed the additional tasks with all Gary assigned to me.
The rest of the day was a blur. I finished inputting all the old invoices into the QuickBooks system and printed the checks and envelopes. Gary left early, so he hadn’t been able to approve them, but I was proud of myself. I was packing up to leave when Danuwoa approached me.
“How was day one?” he asked.
“So far so good. I have a lot to do before tomorrow.”
“The accounting bros started their hazing?”
“They described it as helping me stay busy. How was your day?” Relationships were against the rules, but I could be friends with Danuwoa. I could casually ask about his day, and it didn’t have to mean anything.
“So far this has been the best part.” Then Danuwoa had to go on and say that. He must have seen my panic, because he quickly added, “Because we get to leave.”
“Oh.” My half laugh was unconvincing. My nerves were shot through from being on high alert all day, and now being this close to him was not helping matters.
“Wanna head out together?”
“I have a few things I have to do before I can go,” I lied. As much as I would like Danuwoa’s company while heading to the employee parking structure, there was no way on Creator’s given earth that I would let him see the state of my car.
“What part of town do you live in?”
Oof. I lived in the western part of the city, close to the airport and college, in a rough and sketchy area. It wasn’t so bad, but my apartment was pretty ugly and run-down.
“Bricktown,” I said, the lie rolling off my tongue. I wanted to live in Bricktown. It was historic and a convenient location with a really easy commute to this office.
“Oh, wow, I’m in the Fisher Square area. Well…see ya tomorrow then. Good night.” He left.
Shit. Fisher Square was pretty nice. I felt bad that I’d lied—he probably wouldn’t even care where I lived. I wanted to slam my forehead into the wall because I kept making dumb decision after dumb decision where Danuwoa was concerned.
I sat at my desk twiddling my thumbs for fifteen minutes to make sure he would be out of the parking garage by the time I got there.
Once I got home, I set up my laptop on the small table we used for meals and looked up some websites and videos for how to create amazing executive presentations. Gary had emailed me an old one and told me to just update the numbers, but it was really ugly, and I noticed there were a lot of misspellings. Either this was some sort of test and power play, or Gary did not give a shit about what was presented to the higher-ups. Or maybe no one even looked at the presentations and working as a corporate accountant was just going through the motions and checking off all the steps.
It was well after midnight before I went to bed, but I was proud of that presentation deck. I barely understood the content or any of the Technix-specific vernacular and acronyms, but I used all the old talking points and updated them, plus I thought the new template I created looked sexy as hell.
I woke up extra early and made it to the office to set up my workstation. I would be ready for Gary, and I was excited to have completed a task that at first seemed impossible. You know what was always said about expectations? Never expect anything and you’ll never be disappointed. Was it wrong that I expected Gary to be proud of me since I completed his task?
Gary stormed by my desk, a travel thermos of coffee in his hand. “Send me that presentation, now.”
“It’s already in your inbox, sir.”
“Great.” That was it. He walked away to his glass office.