Company - Max Barry [81]
“I—” Gretel said, but then she was back to the radio station. She waited.
“Gretel?” A man's voice, loud and painfully cheerful. “Jim Davidson. What's this about you being under the weather?”
Jim was HR's personnel manager. “Yes, sorry, Jim. I'm feeling terrible.”
“I'm sorry to hear that,” he said, but his tone didn't change at all: he made it sound as if this was a joke they were sharing. “Unfortunately, that puts us in a bit of a pickle.”
Gretel squeezed the phone. “I'm sure Eve won't mind covering me for one day.” This was a lie: she was sure Eve would mind. However, it would not kill Eve, and after the horrors of Monday, when Gretel was under siege and Eve was nowhere to be seen, it might even be what Eve deserves.
“Yes, I'm sure—if Eve hadn't called in sick ten minutes ago.”
Now Gretel is stabbing buttons on the switchboard while her head pounds and dampness collects under her arms. Exactly why Human Resources is unable to hire a temp is unclear to her, as is why this is her problem. Jim did explain; he spoke at length in that cheery, teeth-cracking voice about the upheaval following the consolidation and how difficult it would be to deal with a new crisis especially since all the people who might have been able to step into her role for the day had just been sacked. After two minutes of this, Gretel agreed to come in so he would stop talking.
She should have held out. As it was yesterday, and the day before that, the switchboard is completely swamped, because half the company has just changed jobs and nobody knows anyone's new number. Human Resources and Asset Protection has promised to issue a new directory, but not for two to three weeks—which, Gretel knows, means it'll be a month and a half, contain numerous key errors, and there won't be enough copies. On top of this, there is no IT department to update the phones, so everyone's caller ID is wrong. You need to dial an additional number to reach employees outside your own department, so Gretel can't connect anybody until she knows where they're calling from. The employees don't understand this, so this morning Gretel has had two hundred conversations like this:
“Good morning, reception.”
“Hi, can you give me Kevin Dawson's new number? He was in Corporate Marketing . . . I'm not sure what that's called now.”
“Can I have your name and department, please?”
“Um . . . Kevin Dawson? In Corporate Marketing?”
“No, not the name of the person you're trying to reach. Your name.”
“Oh! It's Geoff Silvio.”
“In . . . ?”
“Well, I guess it's called Treasury now.”
“Just a moment, Geoff.”
During all this, the switchboard flashes a solid bank of yellow lights at her, informing her that there are twelve more identical conversations lined up and ready to go. At eleven o'clock she is so desperate for the bathroom that she literally runs across the lobby floor, and when she emerges, a man from Senior Management is walking past the reception desk, looking at all the flashing lights, and he frowns at her.
Gretel realizes around twelve thirty that once again she has no hope of lunch: the inflow of calls isn't slackening at all. She enters a numb, robotic state where her mouth and fingers move first and her brain catches up a second later. Over and over, she punches TRANSFER to end one call and activate the next. “Good afternoon, reception.”
“It's me.”
“Yes, hello,” she snaps. “I need to know who you are and where you're calling from before I can connect you.”
There's a surprised pause. “Gretel, it's Sam.”
Sam is her boyfriend. Her mouth drops open. She covers her face with her hands and starts to cry.
Is Roger a bad person? It's a difficult question. Right now it is occupying center stage in Elizabeth's mind. He is petty, yes. He's scheming. He's arrogant and insecure, a terrible combination. He has never shown her any affection bar the physical, and that was brief and impersonal. Sometimes when she looks at