Week Four
Kitchen, 5:15pm
A few of us are there early. It’s going to be a smaller group, from now on, at nights: Steffi, Justin and Vanessa have all moved to day shift. We look up eagerly every time the door opens, in case it’s one of them. We want to hear what day shift is like, as we’re hopeful we’ll be next.
Adrian wanders in and our chatter dies down. He waves a bunch of papers high over his head.
“Contracts, there are contracts,” he says with an air of importance.
I guess those papers he’s waving over his head are supposed to be contracts for full time, permanent jobs.
I wonder if we’re supposed to start jumping up and down, trying to snatch one out of his hands.
Satisfied that he has everyone’s attention, Adrian continues.
“There are contracts out there for those who do a good job. The next few nights are really going to count. We are going to be watching very closely to see how you do.
Each and every one of you.”
He pauses.
“You are going to be looked at … like you have never been looked at before.”
The group of women looking back at him shift in their seats. I try to suppress the smile on my face. Someone covers her mouth with her hand.
“Um….I didn’t mean that like it sounded,” Adrian hastily adds, and we burst into giggles.
“Alright, alright,” he says, turning red. “Anyone want to go for a smoke?”
I notice that Lindsay, who’s one of the smokers, isn’t here tonight. Was she here last night? Was she even here the night before?
Heidi gets up and joins him. They leave.
Sara pushes away her Coke in disgust.
“I don’t want this. I can’t drink anything. My throat hurts.”
“It’s because you’re sitting in Jamilah’s cube, under the big ceiling fan thingie. Don’t sit there. Remember last week, when Jamilah was sick? She said it was the fan. It’s cold sitting under the fan.”
“Maybe.” She wraps her striped purple scarf around her neck.
“I’ll just keep taking Vicks. That’s all I want. Vicks.”
I turn my head slightly away so she can’t see my expression. I know it shouldn’t be funny, the way she pronounces letter “v” like it’s the letter “w.” I want to apologize to all people of Indian background for the expression on my face. I really do. But it’s just too funny. Besides, I’m sure she could make fun of my accent. I’ve just got to get her to stop saying Vicks. Without her knowing it.
I take a deep breath to steady myself.
“You should probably drink lots of fluids too.”
“I don’t even want Coke. That’s how bad I feel. No Coke tonight.”
“Maybe you should take tomorrow night off, get some rest.”
“No way. I need the money.” She crosses her arms and shivers.
“I’ve got a sore throat too,” says Jenny, with a half-smile.
“You too? How long have you had it?”
“A couple of weeks.”
“A couple of weeks?”
“Yeah. I already went to my doctor and she looked at it and said it was fine. I should go see a different doctor. Every time I go to my doctor, whatever it is, she says I’m fine.”
“You should see a different doctor. You don’t actually look that good.”
She blushes.
“I know. I should. But I never get around to it. I should, though.”
I look around the group.
“Is anyone else sick?”
People shake their heads, no.
I resolve to keep a slight distance from Sara and Jenny for the next day or two. I adore them, but I simply cannot get sick.
Courtney comes in and drops her things on the table. She looks out of breath.
“Where’s Melissa?” I ask.
“Fired.”
“What?”
“Less than an hour ago. They did it by phone. While she was on her way to work. Nice, huh?”
“God.”
“That sucks.”
“Who did it? Julien or Amber?”
“Julien.”
“What did he say?”
“Told her she takes too long, she’s just not picking it up quickly enough.”
“That is so –” I hesitated. Unfair wasn’t really the word. It was true that she was catching on a little slower than the others at the systems stuff. But she was also the nicest one, and she really tried hard.
“It’s just, well it’s just mean to wait to call someone when they are actually on their way to work.”
“Tell me about it.”
“And it’s stupid that they would wait until the fourth week to make that decision about somebody,” I added, remembering Derek and a couple others who had been let go so early in the assignment.
“Yeah. But some nights it already seems like they don’t have enough work for us to do. That huge backlog of cases that we were hired to get through, we got it all done. So I think they’re just deciding now who they’re gonna keep and who they’re gonna cut loose.”
“How is she? How did she take it?”
“She’s okay. She said she kind of saw it coming. And she’s got a lot of interviews coming up.”
“Well, tell her we’ll miss her.”
“Yeah.”
The kitchen door swung again. Julien.
“Let’s go, everyone.”
I wanted to give him an especially hostile look, to make up for Melissa, but he was already back through the door. Fine, I’ll save it for Victor, I thought, making up my mind to glare at him if I bumped into him this evening.
But a quick glance at the floor revealed that, once again, Victor was nowhere to be seen.
“Is everyone here tonight?” Julien asked, a bored expression on his face.
“Umm..”
“Lindsay’s not here.”
Julien snapped to attention.
“Lindsay is no longer with us.”
Now my head is spinning. But Lindsay got offered a full time job just a few days ago. This didn’t make any sense.
“Oh. Well. Then yeah, I guess, everyone else is here.”
“Okay. Here are your lists.” He handed them out.
“No talking tonight.”
I sat down in the cube with the Smurfs screensaver.
I swivelled the chair around to check where Sara was sitting and, before I got all the way around, something caught my eye.
There was the staff list tacked up on the side of the cube wall, but one of the names had a thick black line drawn through it.
Mike’s name.
Tags: The Secret Temp by Paul //
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