The
employee stared at the spreadsheet on the screen in front of her, wondering how
on Earth to reconcile the columns of numbers there with the columns of numbers that
she previously had been given. The data
had not changed in the meantime, so this certainly was a puzzler.
To
take a quick break and hope the math would resolve itself, she checked the
e-mail messages that she had ignored for the past two hours during the vain
attempt to finish this project.
Ten new messages – oh boy. Most of them would be meaningless.
One
did catch her attention: Emergency
Mandatory Meeting at 10:00 a.m. in the Blue Conference Room. She shifted her eyes to the bottom right
of the screen and saw the time was now 11:47 a.m. Oops. Oh well, no other related messages; can’t
have been that important.
She
unwillingly returned to wading in the sea of numbers and saw at last what
needed to be done: she proceeded to do it, in triumph.
An
hour later, one of her co-workers stopped by on her way to lunch: “Wow, can you
believe what’s going on? I mean, I just,
there are no words.”
Not
wanting to admit that she had not attended the meeting that required
attendance, she noncommittally replied with: “I hear ya.”
“You’re
not kidding.”
She
buried her head in a random file folder to signal that she was significantly
busy and had no time for idle chit-chat about important issues; the other
employee took the rude hint and looked for other company with which to share
the misery.
The
employee stared at the papers in the folder and could not believe her eyes: How could such a glaring typo have been
included in this policy for… eight years?! And no one noticed it!? Now it’s
going to have to go through committee review all over again; who knows what
else is wrong with it?! The worst
part of the whole thing was that she was the one who had written it.
She
was engrossed in cross-outs, inserts, and transpositions when her phone
interrupted: “Yes, what is it?” she answered with her standard greeting.
“Can
you believe what’s going on? I’m beside
myself. I mean, can you believe
it?”
She
quickly reviewed her options and went with: “No.”
“I
know, right? So, any ideas on what you’re
going to do about it?”
Another unnecessary apostrophe?! Son of a – “Listen, I can’t talk right
now, I’ve gotta go.”
“Ooooh,
I understand, say no more. Good luck!”
She
hung up the phone and stared at it for a moment: Should I start being concerned about whatever it is everyone else seems
to know and I don’t? That was overridden
by the shame in seeing her correction-riddled document, which she originally thought
she had written so well. If I had messed up so badly with that, what
else in life have I messed up without knowing it?!
“Hey.” She looked up from the cross-referenced
papers to see her manager standing next to the desk. “Got a minute?”
Not really; there is too much to be done and
too much is at stake. “Sure – what’s
up?”
He
sat on the edge of the desk, threatening her precarious piles. “You know, what they said at the meeting
today, that affects all of us.”
“…Yes?”
“And,
frankly, we’re not certain what’s going to happen down the road, and everyone’s
worried.”
“…Yes?”
“Is
there anything you’d like to talk about, with me or with Human Resources?”
“…No?”
He
raised his eyebrows at her. “‘No?’”
“No.”
“Wow. OK.
Then I guess there’s nothing left to discuss here.” He stood to leave, then hovered again. “You know, I’m actually a bit surprised – I figured
you of all people would’ve had a few choice words to say about all this.”
“Well,
you know me.” She looked back down at
her papers.
“What?”
“What?” She looked back up at him again.
“Never
mind.” And he finally left.
She
went back to tearing her work apart when a new e-mail caught her eye: Please meet with Human Resources and your
manager at 3:00 p.m. That was in
five minutes, and it would take five minutes to walk down there.
Oh, bother.
She threw her pencil and papers onto the desk and stalked all the way
to H.R. How am I ever supposed to get any work done around here with all these
interruptions?!
