Chapter 7
Bug's Grand Tour (and the Art of Strategic Delay)
Alyssa
The elevator dinged its ascent, a tinny carol leaking from the speaker like a slow drip of eggnog through a cheesecloth. Alyssa stood in the back corner, clutching Bug’s lead in one hand and rehearsing her apology in her head for the hundredth time. Her nerves jangled with every floor.
At least she wasn’t the only one feeling the tension; Bug glared at the ceiling with all the silent judgment of a Victorian magistrate, completely ignoring the trio of sales reps who tried to pet him on the fifth floor.
“Don’t take it personally,” Alyssa whispered to one of them. “He’s a bit…senior management.”
The woman gave a tight smile, then shuffled out, casting a wistful look back at Bug’s stumpy tail. Alyssa tried to smooth her hair in the polished steel doors and gave up. There was no smoothing anything about this day, this situation, or—if she was being honest—her entire adult life.
The elevator stopped on the twelfth floor. Alyssa pressed the button for the top floor again, but Bug had other ideas. The moment the doors opened, he yanked the lead from her hand and bolted.
“Bug! No!” Alyssa lunged after him, nearly colliding with a woman carrying a precarious stack of files that looked like they’d been photocopied sometime during the Major administration.
“Sorry! So sorry!” Alyssa called over her shoulder as she chased Bug down the corridor.
Bug, for his part, seemed to have a very specific destination in mind.
He trotted with purpose past the open-plan office, ignoring the calls of “cute dog!” and “come here, puppy!” from various employees who clearly hadn’t read the memo about not distracting working animals.
Alyssa followed, breathless, as Bug made a sharp right turn into what appeared to be a break room.
Inside, the accounts team huddled around a table that looked more like a battlefield of spreadsheets and half-eaten lunches.
The fluorescent lighting gave everyone the complexion of someone who’d been underground for several months.
Bug made a beeline for a dropped sandwich crust, his stealth operations worthy of a corporate espionage expert.
“I am so sorry,” Alyssa panted, finally catching up. “He’s not supposed to—”
A lanky guy, who introduced himself as Tom, with thick-rimmed glasses and a calculator watch that probably had more computing power than the building’s server, interrupted her.
“Are you kidding? We’ve been the forgotten department all year.
Last month, they forgot to invite us to the fire drill.
We only found out there’d been one when someone mentioned it in passing. ”
After Tom introduced himself, it was like a line of dominoes fell as Alyssa tried to remember all their names.
Priya, a woman with intricate henna tattoos peeking out from her sleeves and an expression that suggested she’d seen every creative accounting trick in the book, nodded.
“Every other team gets a dog. Marketing? Golden Retriever. HR? Adorable Corgi. Us? Spreadsheets and the lingering scent of despair.”
Sarah, who looked like she’d been born with a red pen in her hand and had probably corrected her own birth certificate for grammatical errors, was already scratching Bug behind the ears.
“We’re not ‘too busy,’” she air-quoted with the precision of someone who’d spent years highlighting discrepancies.
“We’re just…strategically overlooked. Like that corner of the office where the printer goes to die. ”
Alyssa recognised that tone. These were people who knew exactly how important they were, even if no one else did. The unsung heroes who kept the lights on while everyone else took credit for the electricity.
“Accounts keeps this place running,” she said. “Without you, no one gets paid.”
Tom’s eyes lit up. “Exactly! We’re the unsung heroes. The backbone. The—” He paused. “Actually, we’re more like the spleen. Vital, but no one really knows what we do.”
Bug, sensing an ally, dropped the sandwich crust and sat directly on Tom’s shoe, looking up with what could only be described as professional solidarity. Or possibly just the hope of more sandwich.
“I think,” Alyssa said, watching Bug settle in like he’d found his spiritual home, “Bug would like to be your official morale officer. Lunch breaks only. Non-negotiable.”
The trio exchanged looks of pure, unbridled joy—the kind usually reserved for discovering the vending machine had been restocked or that the quarterly meeting had been cancelled.
“We’ll take him,” Priya said solemnly. “We’ll treat him better than some of our senior managers treat us.”
“Which is to say, we’ll remember his name,” Tom added.
Alyssa had a sneaking feeling the “senior management” knew every single name in the accounting department. They were more than likely treated a lot better than most departments.
Bug wagged his tail, as if he’d just closed a multi-million pound deal. Or at least secured a reliable source of sandwich crusts.
As Alyssa left the break room, Bug in tow, she felt a small glow of satisfaction.
Maybe this partnership was working better than she’d thought.
Maybe the dogs were doing exactly what they were meant to do: reminding people that work was just work, and that sometimes the most important thing was a moment of uncomplicated joy.
But her satisfaction was short-lived. Bug had apparently decided that today was the day for maximum chaos.
As they passed the marketing department on the fifteenth floor, he spotted something through the glass wall and froze, ears perked like satellite dishes receiving a transmission from the Dog Star.
“Bug, no. We need to—”
Too late. Bug launched himself at the glass, barking frantically at a poster of a German Shepherd advertising Crawford’s premium dog food line. The poster dog looked impossibly glossy and professional, the kind of dog that had never eaten its own sick or rolled in something unspeakable.
“Bug! That’s not a real dog! It’s been Photoshopped to within an inch of its life!”
Several marketing employees looked up from their desks, some amused, others wearing the expression of people who’d been in back-to-back meetings since dawn and were no longer entirely sure what reality was.
A woman in a sharp blazer that probably cost more than Alyssa’s monthly grocery budget approached, her heels clicking with the authority of someone who’d survived at least three corporate restructures.
“Is he okay?” she asked, not unkindly.
“He’s fine. Just…passionate about advertising, apparently.” Alyssa tugged Bug away from the poster. “Sorry for the disruption. I’m sure you were all doing very important…marketing things.”
The woman laughed, a genuine sound that seemed to surprise even her. “Don’t be. This is the most entertainment we’ve had all week. Last excitement was when someone used the wrong font in a presentation. There were tears. I’m Claudia, by the way. Legal, technically, but I wander.”
“Alyssa. Four Paws. Also a wanderer, but usually with more purpose.”
“Oh! You’re the one who brought all the dogs.” Claudia’s expression shifted to something more conspiratorial, the look of someone about to share classified information. “Everyone’s been talking about you.”
Alyssa winced. “I’m guessing not all positive?”
“Mixed reviews. The dog people love you. The people who think animals belong in fields and not near their ergonomic keyboards are less enthusiastic.” Claudia glanced around, then lowered her voice. “I heard you had a bit of a run-in with the top floor this morning.”
Alyssa felt her face heat. “Word travels fast.”
“This is a corporate office. Gossip is our primary form of communication. That and passive-aggressive emails.” Claudia leaned in. “For what it’s worth, the general consensus is that you weren’t entirely wrong. Things have been…tense since the transition.”
She didn’t elaborate, but Alyssa caught the subtext. New leadership. Old expectations. The kind of pressure that turned reasonable people into walking stress fractures.
“Are you heading up to apologize?” Claudia asked.
“That obvious?”
“The fact that you’re dragging a reluctant dog toward the executive elevator is a bit of a giveaway. Also, you have that look. Like you’re about to walk into a performance review you know won’t go well.”
Alyssa laughed despite herself. “Any advice?”
Claudia considered. “Be direct. Don’t grovel. And maybe lead with the dog. Hard to stay angry at someone holding a Cocker Spaniel.” She paused. “Good luck. You’ll need it.”
As Claudia walked away, Alyssa felt a knot tighten in her stomach.
She’d faced down angry donors, hostile board members, and once, a particularly aggressive goose that had taken up residence at the sanctuary.
But somehow, the thought of facing Evelyn Crawford again made her more nervous than all of those combined.
Bug, apparently sensing her anxiety, had decided he’d had enough. He planted his bottom firmly on the floor and refused to move, his expression suggesting he’d found this spot perfectly acceptable for the foreseeable future.
“Bug, come on. We need to do this.”
Bug looked at her with those soulful brown eyes and yawned, a performance of indifference that would have impressed a teenager.
“You’re not helping,” Alyssa muttered.
A passing janitor, pushing a cart that squeaked with the rhythm of someone who’d been doing this job for decades, chuckled. “That one’s got a mind of his own, doesn’t he?”
“You have no idea. I’m starting to think he’s conducting some kind of social experiment.”
“Dogs usually are,” the janitor said sagely. “They’re smarter than most of the people in this building. Present company excluded, of course.”
After five minutes of coaxing, bribing with treats that Bug examined with the scepticism of a food critic, and finally just picking him up like a furry, judgmental sack of potatoes, Alyssa managed to get Bug into the executive elevator.