A Bubble of Time

Chapter 2: A Tedious Life

Even at my job where I'm appreciated and respected, I talk more under my breath than I do out loud. I do like my job—but mostly because I don't have to deal with people other than the ones in my accounting department. I am a loner and always have been. I am the finance manager for Goodson & Brothers, which has a chain of successful sporting goods stores all over the Midwest. I am used to dysfunction, but there has never been a more dysfunctional bunch then those that work on the fourth floor of the Mercantile Building on Second and Main Street in Cincinnati, Ohio.

I will include myself in that description. I'm the woman who walks down the aisle holding my cell phone and pretending to text so I won't have to greet people. Of course the people that I work with are abnormal so I don't feel too bad avoiding them. There is the obligatory "cat-lady" which every office has, who comes to work smelling like ammonia and oftentimes scratched and mauled by her "babies." There is also the man who's as old as my mom and calls every woman he meets "baby," stands inches from you because he doesn't understand the concept of personal space, and is hopeless to understand that no one is interested in sleeping with his old ass. And let's not forget George, who wears the same black pants every day and might be stealing the lunches from the office refrigerator. Oh, and he weighs probably four hundred pounds and doesn't wear underwear. We know this because the boss once told him that he needed to zip up his pants because nobody wanted to see his "thing," and he yelled that he couldn't help it that the zipper was broke.

And then there is my manager, Cassie.

I tried to speed walk past her office—not easy to do when walking was a series of lurching movements because your kids probably stepped on every crack they saw ensuring that your back would always stay broken.

"Kenya."

Damnit. I turned and plastered a smile on my face. "Good morning, Cassie."

Cassie was a tall, slow talking woman with steel gray eyes, steel gray hair, and a pasty complexion. She seemed all washed out like a dirty towel that hadn't been bleached enough. I used to like her, but that was before I was moved to her department.

I am the type of person who doesn't believe that someone can be—or should be—friends with their boss. One minute you are chilling and friendly and then the next that friend puts on the "boss" hat. It's uneven. I've seen a manager "correct" her friend in the workplace, and I've seen the "friend" spill all of the secrets of the manager. No thank you. Work is for working. And when I make my friends it's going to be outside of the workplace.

"I am not going to be here Thursday or Friday," she said while shuffling papers on her desk. "So I am going to need you to turn in the sales report and take care of the weekly budget—oh! And head up the team meeting."

"I'm on it," I said.

"I need you to sit in on the strategic planning meeting today. I am so tired of Gladys throwing in her two cents. Those meetings take all day as it is!" She leaned in. "You know they're watching our department closely so be sure to do the reports right."

I hid a frown. I always did the reports and turned them into her—even though that was her job, so she knew I did them right. A mean person could easily screw them up so that they would screw her. After all, I am next in line for her job. But in the real world you don't do that to another person. I'd do the reports, head up the meeting, collect the Excel sheets from the other teams, compile them, and set up the weekly input schedule for next week—and then I would do my own work. My head began to pound as I silently cursed her.

"Oh," she said while turning to open a file. "You did a review on section M-twenty-four, but you wrote the wrong time on it. It's not a big deal, but it's the kind of thing that they look for. So you have to be more careful. My annual review is coming up and they use every opportunity to screw me out of my bonus, those fuckers." She practically spat.

I was appalled that she had no problems admitting that her evaluation was based on me doing her work. I'm sure my eyes became glazed as I fantasized about sabotaging her reports. But again, that wasn't my style. However, she was wrong about inputting the incorrect time. She hadn't factored in Daylight Savings Time. I explained it to her, and she shrugged and said something offhanded about knowing that.

She wanted to show me another review, but in the middle of searching for it, she checked a text she had received on her cell phone, took a few minutes to reply, guffawing as she texted back and forth with her friend before finally looking up at me as if she had no idea why I was there.

I told her I'd check back in later and hurried off to my cubicle before she wasted any more of my time.

No, I am not a pushover, but I do choose my battles wisely. I have a house that is ninety-seven years old. and everything seems to break at the same time. I have a mortgage, a car p*****t, and a student loan that I am still paying off. I have to choose my battles wisely.

My office phone was ringing when I reached my cubicle—ten minutes late because of my meeting with Cassie. And then I began my real job, answering questions for upper management, finding discrepancies in reports, and helping grown people do a job that they have been doing for far too long to still be asking the same questions.