Unsolicited

The text message simply said “very clever’.  Jim frowned at the scuffed up phone screen trying to make out the phone number.  ‘Unknown’ it said.  Helpful, he thought as he rolled his eyes probably some spammer and he put the phone back in his pocket..   He returned his attention to the meeting, although he hadn’t missed anything.  Somebody with a thick accent was monologuing on the conference phone, reading line for line from his PowerPoint which was being projected against the wall at the far end of the room.

“...team would take over issues at the beginning of their work day...”

Ten of Jim’s teammates sat around the grey table under beige walls staring at their laptops, not even pretending to pay attention to the presenter but instead trying to get ahead of schedule on their assigned tasks.  Jim looked at his laptop, changed windows and pressed “Send/Receive” in Outlook hoping for any external stimulation but no new emails came in.

“...an hour or two of overlap is essential, this enables hand off of any issues…”

With a sigh Jim opened Facebook, scrolling through his feed, not really seeing anything for a few minutes then closed the tab.  He glanced up at the presentation, trying to pretend he was paying attention, his gaze snagged on Tina who rolled her eyes and smirked at Jim.  Jim shut his eyes and dropped his head a few inches, miming falling asleep, but quickly so no one else would notice.  When he opened his eyes again Tina was smiling and shaking her head before straightening up in her chair and returning her attention to her laptop.

Jim looked back up at the PowerPoint presentation.  The slide had changed and been replaced by a flow diagram of some sort.  There were boxes representing his team and their overseas equivalents.  Lines connected the boxes into a circle which surrounded a cloud.  The wall beneath the projected cloud was marked up by dry-erase marker.  Some moron who had used the room before them had decided the thirty by five foot whiteboard on the side of the room wasn’t good enough and written on the wall.  The marking was illegible, it looked like someone had spent some time trying to clean it before giving up.  By this time next week the wall would be repainted.

“... are there any questions?”

The ever anticipated keywords indicated they were nearing the end of the presentation.  Jim’s eyes snapped back to attention and refocused on the slide.  It had one word on it, the letters were a foot tall.  Jim held his breath, hoping nobody would have any questions and they could get out of the meeting 15 minutes early and head to lunch.

“Yeah,” Rick, his boss leaned forward, speaking into the conference phone in the center of the table.  A totally unnecessary effort since one of the many peripheral microphones was clearly six inches from his face.

“I was wondering if you could elaborate on…”  Jim leaned back in his chair stretching his arms up over his head.  His spine cracked in a few places and he grunted, stifling an exasperated groan.  The presenter responded to his question, then there were follow up clarifications.  When the follow up queries were exhausted he asked again if there were questions.  We could get out seven minutes early now, Jim thought… but someone else had a question.  This pattern repeated itself until there were two minutes left and everyone magically ran out of questions or maybe they all just stopped caring.

“Well…” the voice paused dramatically, giving everyone last chance to delay their lunch break, “if you have any other questions feel free to email or message me.  I’m online late most nights and I know this is a big change, so don’t hesitate to ask questions.”  Jim felt himself holding his breath again, the speaker paused again.  “Thanks for your time, have a great day!”

There were mutters of agreement and reciprocation all throughout the room, Rick stood and leaned over the conference phone, his finger on the ‘hang up’ button, he practically shouted into the phone.  “Thanks for the presentation, Igor!  It was very enlightening, we’ll be in touch”.

There was a click and the lights on the phone went off.  An audible, collective sigh of release filled the room.  Tina chuckled, “So it took him an hour to say ‘make sure you get a status update from Europe when you start in the morning.”  Jim rolled his eyes and shrugged.

Rick shook his head, “it’s important that we are all on the same page and don’t drop customer issues.”

“Is he expecting us to have an hour long sync meeting every morning?” Jim groaned.  Luckily nobody heard him over the shuffling of feet, laptops, and coats as everyone hurried towards the doorway trying their best to not look like they were hurrying.

Jim hung back avoiding the bustle so he was one of the last to leave the conference room. The air in the hallway felt cool and fresh after the stuffy conference room he breathed in cleansing the musty smell of his coworkers from his head.

“Hey” came a voice from behind him.  He turned and saw Tina had been waiting for him.  Tina was pretty although Jim had never seen her as anything other than a friend.  She was a good foot shorter than him and naturally brunette but he only knew that because he could see her roots.  Every week her hair was a different color this week it was neon blue.

“You have plans for lunch today?”  She fell in beside him and they followed the rest of the horde back towards their desks.

“Not really, you wanna grab a bite in the cafe’?” Jim hoisted his laptop under his arm, dragging his feet and lengthening the distance between him and his coworkers.

“Nah, let’s head off campus today, what about that deli?  The one attached to the butcher?”

“Sure,” Jim shrugged, “I need to drop off my laptop” he lifted it slightly then gestured towards it with his head, “then we can head out, cool?”

“Cool, I’ll just meet you there.”

Jim’s cubicle was a mess.  Post-It notes were attached to nearly every vertical surface, and then knickknacks and notepads were strewn on virtually every horizontal surface.  No trash, Jim was messy but definitely not a slob.  He walked the single pace to the back of his tiny cloth lined cell and set his laptop down, attaching the cable lock and power adapter.  He turned to leave but something caught his eye.  Sitting in the corner of his cubicle nearest the entrance, hidden from view unless you were inside looking out was a doll of some kind.

Jim squinted quizzically at the doll and leaned over to grab it.  He didn’t know anything about dolls but he knew it wasn’t Barbie, it looked far too much like an actual human.  It was definitely made in the likeness of an adult.  He lifted it up and found a note was pinned to the back.  It read “but I found you anyway”