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There it is, right in front of me: a staff list, with Mike’s name crossed out.

I lean back in my chair and look over to Sara.

“Pssst. Hey. Where’s Mike?”

“Shhhhhhhh,” she hisses back.

I raise both hands in the air — did something happen?

Sara launches into a coughing fit but manages to motion me over to her desk.

“He’s gone,” she finally manages to get out.

“What? Why?” I can’t believe it. He was training all of us only a few weeks ago. He was easily one of the most visible, well liked staff members.

“Heidi knows. She found out on smoke break.”

Darn it! I knew I should have taken up smoking. That’s the only way to find out anything in this place.

But Sara continued.

“She told me … but I’m not supposed to tell.”

I immediately start on her.

“Come on. Please?”

“Well….”

“I won’t tell anyone.”

“I know, but –”

“You know Heidi would tell me anyways.”

“Oh all right!”

I silently remind myself that I should have taken that CIA job. Breaking Sara is so easy.

“It looks like he was involved in something bad. Like he was doing stuff like making up customer records, to get the products for himself.”

“Oh my God!!”

Amber looks over at us and raises her pencilled eyebrows.

Sara starts coughing again and I slink away.

I get back to Smurf Girl’s cube and look at Mike’s name crossed out with the big thick black line.

Melissa doesn’t know how lucky she was, that he didn’t pay attention to her.

**

Break, Kitchen, 7:03pm

It’s the talk of break. Somehow, amazingly, all of the temps know.

“Yeah, and that’s why Lindsay’s gone, too,” says a temp. “Looks like she may have been in on it with Mike.”

I remember Mike and Lindsay huddled together in her cube, talking quietly, and feel kind of sick. I put down my turkey sandwich.

“Looks like they were involved in some kind of insider trading,” another temp says, darkly.

I clap my hand over my mouth and try to think of something serious. Then I remember the customer case I couldn’t figure out, the one that I handed back to Mike with a handwritten note, and I start to fret. Does that make me some kind of accomplice to criminal activity?

Surely not, I decide, pushing my sandwich away. I had no idea there was anything going on — if there was — and I was just trying to make sense of what was going on.

I curse under my breath as I walk over to the vending machine. If I had shown that case to a supervisor, maybe all this would have come to light sooner. Maybe I could have helped the company. Saved them some TV’s. Actually made a difference in my limited time here.

And why didn’t I show the case to Amber or Julien?

Because Mike was popular, and fun, and nice, and I didn’t want to be some dweeb who ran to her supervisor saying the sky was falling.

Because Mike was better at this stuff than I was, and I didn’t want to look like I wasn’t getting it like Melissa because I didn’t understand a case.

Because I just assumed that he was a good guy, maybe helping his grandma, and that this was all kind of some hush hush wink wink stuff where the regular staff got to expedite customer cases for family members as some kind of benefit of the job — and I didn’t want to be the loser who had to get shut up and taken aside and told that that’s just how things work when you’re a staff member.

For all those stupid reasons that have nothing to do with Mike and everything to do with me.

I decide I couldn’t even get a job as a temp with the CIA.

**

On our way back from break, I ask Heidi how Steffi is going on day shift.

“Not good,” Heidi says. “She called me this morning and warned me, if they offer you the full time job, don’t take it.”

“It’s that bad?”

“She’s like, dying. She’s got 80 pending cases.”

“Whoa.”

“I know. I get into her pending list when we’re here and I do what I can, but there’s only so much I can do.”

“Eighty pending.”

“I know.”

“What’s she going to do?”

Heidi shrugged.

“As soon as that job comes through for her husband, she’s out of here.”

“But she’s only been working full time for a week.”

“So?”

“So…” I repeat stupidly.

“So…yeah.”

“Her husband’s job better come through soon.”

“Yeah.”

I go back to my cube, sit down, and wince as a tightness and soreness spreads through my throat.

Oh no. No no no no no. I can’t get sick now! Not when people are getting hired and fired and engaging in criminal activity all around me. I can’t miss a minute of this.

I pull on my jacket and try not to shiver. I’m not..okay even if I am coming down with something, I’m not going to call in sick. I’ll just take Tylenol. I’ll be fine.

Tags: The Secret Temp by Paul // Add a comment »

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 // Add a comment »

Week Three, A Random Night

Kitchen, 5:34pm

The temps are sitting around talking as they usually do, but something is different tonight. I can feel it.

Julien comes in. He wipes the perspiration off his brow.

“SAP’s down,” he announces. SAP is the computer program that runs the customer service software. If SAP is down, we can’t look up customers. We can’t get work done.

There is a collective intake of breath around the temps’ table. Several people sit up straight. Sara clutches her bag. Are we going to get sent home?

Julien reads our minds. He frowns and shakes his head.

“Don’t get excited,” he says. “We’ve got people working on it. If it’s not working by, say….six o’clock…then we’ll send you home.

Until then, ummm.. chat amongst yourselves.”

He hurries off.

Sara looks at the clock. It’s 5:35pm.

“I hope we get sent home,” she says. “It’s the season finale of The Biggest Loser tonight and I haven’t missed a single episode.”

“I can’t believe you watch that show,” says Vanessa, turning away in time to miss Sara’s withering stare.

“Would we still get paid?” someone wants to know.

“Not sure.”

“I think we get paid in 15 minute increments.”

“I think they should pay us for the whole shift.”

“Yeah, good luck. They didn’t pay for our parking tickets.”

“You really thought they were going to pay for the parking tickets?”

We are plunged into darkness.

“LIGHTS!” gets called from a ways off.

We wait and nothing can be heard for a while except for the munching of chips.

“Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to work tonight. I mean, I drove all the way here. This was a long way to drive, to not get paid.”

“I hope we stay. I need the money.”

“Well it’s not up to us anyways.”

The lights flick on and we blink in the brightness.

It’s 5:45pm. Sara keeps looking at the clock. I am not sure what time The Biggest Loser starts, but I’m sure she’s keeping track of what time she could get home and how much of the finale she would get to see as it’s broadcast.

“Aren’t you recording it?” I want to know.

“Yeah, but it’s not the same thing,” she says.

I look around the table.

“Someone’s not here. Who’s not here?”

“Lori quit,” Heidi says, covering her mobile phone with her free hand.

“Why?” I ask, remembering the mom who watched 24. And drank bourbon.

Heidi shrugged. “She was over it.”

“I’m going to be over it pretty soon,” she adds, laughing.

Someone starts tapping their foot on the floor. Heidi goes back to her phone conversation. Sara checks her watch.

I jump up.

“I’m going to see what’s going on out there. Be right back.”

I walk out to the main floor, mainly to get away from the others, but also because I really want to find Mike and hear him say how helpful I was for writing him that little note about the messed-up case. But his cube is empty and the computer is off. Darn. He’s not in tonight.

I look around for anyone else interesting. No Victor this evening either.

Julien has a little group of managers huddled around him and they’re looking at a computer screen and they don’t look happy.

I head back to the kitchen.

“Not much going on out there.”

“But it’s six o’clock!” Sara exclaims. “Do you think we can just leave?”

“No. We can’t just sneak out.”

“He should tell us what’s going on. Tell us how much longer till the system will be up.”

“He probably has no clue.”

“But how long do you think he’ll just leave us all sitting here?”

“What if he hasn’t noticed the time?”

“Yeah, what if he just forgets about us?”

“I’ve got better things to do than sit here.”

“Me too.”

“Okay…it is past six o’clock. It’s 6:01, actually. I’ll go ask him what the deal is.”

I stride out into the hallway, turn the corner, and head over to Julien. I wait pointedly until he has to stop what he’s saying and turn to me. He looks irritated. I decide to get right to the point.

“It’s past six o’clock,” I tell him.

He shakes his head.

“Goalposts have changed.”

I open my mouth to ask what the new deadline is, but he shoots me a look and then turns back to his little group and keeps talking.

I go back to the break room feeling deflated.

“He’s changed the time. And he wouldn’t say what it was.”

Sighs.

“I want to go.”

“He should let us go.”

“It would be, like, mean, for them to make us wait all this time, and then at the last second, tell us we have to work.”

More minutes pass.

“So, Justin,” Courtney turns to him casually. “You still gonna take that Disney cruise line job?”

“It’s there if I want it,” he replies, leaning back in his chair.

“You’re so full of s–t,” she laughs, shaking her head.

“It is,” he insists.

“I have the feeling I better get another job soon,” Maggie says. “I’m not doing well at this one.”

There’s an uncomfortable silence. It’s been hard not to notice that Julien and Amber keep putting Maggie on easier tasks.

Maggie smiles. “God you guys, don’t all jump in at once with how great I am.”

Heidi clicks her phone shut.

“Hey. None of us want to wind up here anyways.”

Jenny, the youngest one smiles.

“Yeah, I don’t even have an offer but I don’t want to wind up here. I’ve got to figure out what to do with my life.”

I think I remember her saying she was nineteen. “Are you taking any classes?”

“Here and there.”

“So, what have you studied so far?”

“Animal Science…and Japanese.”

Foreheads crease. I suddenly get very interested in my chips.

“Well if anyone wants a Japanese speaking vet –” Courtney finally starts, a gleam in her eyes.

“Yeah, I know.” Jenny waves her off.

Then she grows serious.

“I also wanted to take German,” she adds, as if this might make her choices sound more logical. “But there weren’t enough people who signed up for the class.”

“This is ridiculous.” Sara jabs at her watch. “It’s six-fifteen. I’m telling you guys, I am not going to sit here fore—“

The door opens. Julien.

“It’s working!” he says. “Come on. Let’s go.”

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That Same Friday, 10:01pm

Leaving the Building

I am walking out with several of the temps but I grab Sara’s arm.

“Walk with me,” I say in a low voice.

She nods and we pick up our pace toward the dark parking lot.

“Listen, I know you feel like s–t because you haven’t been offered a full time job, and same here, so I’ll tell you something I found out tonight.”

I glance around, and, satisfied the other temps are trailing far behind, recount the details of my conversation with Amber earlier that evening.

“So you see, they’re not even real jobs,” I conclude.

Sara walks faster and I almost trot to keep up with her.

“Oh my God,” she says. “I was feeling like absolute crap tonight. Absolute crap. Like I didn’t even care what I was doing.

I was like, they offer almost everyone a job, but not me? I mean, Courtney I can understand, but Lindsay? She started after me. What is that? I’ll tell you what it is. It’s because I’m brown.”

“No it isn’t,” I quickly say. I know prejudice is everywhere, but most of the temps who have been offered full time jobs are minorities. And I don’t want to believe I work somewhere where they make hiring decisions based on race.

“Yes it is,” she insists.

I study Sara. She is of Indian background. Her skin is a gorgeous deep chocolate brown. Maybe she’s saying she’s being discriminated against because she has darker skin than the other temps? I flash back to the year I lived in Hong Kong, and all the creepy “skin whitening creams” there being hawked to Asian women. Could that really be a factor, that she has darker skin than the other temps?

“Look at Lindsay,” Sara says. “She is blonde and cute — and that’s what he’s doing, Julien is offering the jobs to the cute ones.”

“I don’t think Lindsay is cute.” We have reached our cars.

Sara stands stiffly and clutches her handbag.

“It’s because I’m brown,” she repeats.

I wait. I haven’t faced this kind of prejudice. I am not sure what to say.

“I don’t care,” she suddenly says. “Whatever people do in this life, it will come back to them.”

“It will come back to them, later,” she says again. I try to recall what the Hindu religion says about the afterlife but then I remember that she has told me she is Christian. Eh well, most religions have nothing on the Christians when it comes to you’re-gonna-pay-for-this-later kind of wrath.

I cast about for something to say.

“Look, Sara, there’s still the matter that these aren’t even real jobs, necessarily.

I mean, these kids — sorry, these twenty year olds, I know you’re still in your twenties — they think they have job offers, they don’t seem to understand that Amber’s just testing the waters with them, making a list of those interested.

What if they don’t understand that it’s not a real offer till it’s on paper? Shouldn’t I say something to them, about what Amber told me? That Amber is just making a list? I mean, what if one of them passes up a real job offer from somewhere else, thinking they’ve got one here, and then it doesn’t come through?”

Sara is still gazing into the darkness, her jaw set.

“Don’t you think this is a huge deal?” I pester her.

She’s not listening to me.

The other temps catch up.

“Goodnight guys,” they yell to each other, climbing into their cars.

“Goodnight,” I call back, feeling a bit guilty.

I turn to face Sara, but she’s gone.

**

Week Three, Night One

Kitchen, 5:32pm

I burst into the kitchen, breathless, with Julien and Amber hot on my heels. I’ve never been late for shift, and I hope they are preoccupied.

Fortunately, they don’t seem to notice my timing, and I slide into my seat quietly.

“You’re lucky,” says Justin, under his breath. “Last week I got busted for being late.”

“What did they say?” I murmur to him.

“They said not to let it happen again,” he said, and I shiver.

I hate being told I’ve done the wrong thing. Plus I’ve told everyone I know about having this job. Now that I’m back in the working world, I’ve suddenly become interesting and everyone wants to know what’s been happening at work. So I definitely don’t want to screw up having this job.

“Can I have your attention,” says Julien to the assembled temps. “We haven’t organized your work for tonight yet, so keep working on whatever you were working on Friday night.”

“But you told us we had to finish that,” objects someone.

“Yeah, I did all mine.”

“Me too.”

“Me –”

“Okay, okay,” he interjects. “I get it.

Ah, we’ll give you some more of the stuff that the day staff are working on. Go ahead to your desks and I’ll pull some files.

Just don’t everybody log onto the server all at once, or you guys will crash it again.”

People crowd through the door but I linger behind to study the vending machines. Hey, I don’t want to crash the server. I’m just trying to help.

Main Floor, 6:42pm

Woo hoo! I’ve downed two Cokes and a pack of M n’ Ms, and I am on fire. I am racing through customer cases and closing them as fast as humanly possible. No, maybe faster.

I am a goddess at this job. I am a legend. So what if Julien and Amber can’t see that I rule. I’ll show them.

Though, tonight, I guess I’ll just show Mike, I think, reminding myself that it’s his backlog of cases I’m working on this evening. I scan the main floor and am disappointed to note that he seems to have already left. Oh well. He can come in tomorrow morning and have, like, nothing to do. He shall be amazed.

Yeah, that’s it! Mike will tell Julien and Amber that I am the best temp. He will say, “HEY, do you guys want to order a pizza, and by the way, you are completely missing that –”

I come to a case that stops me in my tracks.

I lean forward and study it. OK, I am a goddess, so this shouldn’t be hard. Start with the customer’s name. The customer’s name is….Mike’s name. That’s confusing. Why would Mike be the customer?

I push back my chair and take a meditative sip of Coke. Well, sometimes we buy the company’s products, ourselves. We all have TV’s and fridges and the like. And sometimes products are going to break. We know that, working in this department, where we handle all those issues.

So it’s not impossible that Mike is the customer and he has a problem with his — I scoot the chair forward again to have a look — with his TV.

I frown as I scan the rest of the case. There are no notes, just an attached service report that lists the customer’s name as something different. A woman’s name. That’s weird. The customer names should match, anyone knows that. I could have worked here one day and known that. I could have never worked here and known that. I shake my head. These people seriously underestimate me.

I sigh and look at it again. Come on, make sense, I can hear everyone around me getting work done. I cocked my head to the side but the green lettering on the screen remained unchanged. You stupid screen. Make sense. Come on, make sense. What am I missing?

I tossed the empty can into the basket and thought again. I try to think of what I know about Mike. He’s funny and popular and everyone likes him. Even Maggie still likes him. And, Mike knows more than I do. He’s done this job longer, and he’s on the day staff. So there must just be something I’m not getting.

Maybe this woman is his grandma. That’s it! This woman is his grandma, and he’s helping her navigate the customer service process for her broken TV, so that she doesn’t have to do it herself. My impression of Mike shoots through the roof. What a great guy. I should never have thought badly of him. In fact, I bet he didn’t even mean to lead on Maggie. I’m sure I just imagined that too. That Mike, what a great guy. Helping his grandma. Right on, Mike.

I look at the clock. Almost break time. I’ve got to get this one off my list. I start entering notes in the system to Mike, but then I stop. I don’t want to embarrass him. I’ve already been bowing and scraping to Cacee for days to try to show her I’m on her side.

I delete the notes and write a long, handwritten note to Mike along the lines of “saw this case, can’t figure it out, let me know if you want me to do something, otherwise it’s yours” and put it on his desk. I remember that his cube is next to that of Dawn, the manager who Sara warned me about, and I fold the note over twice so that she really will have some explaining to do if she opens it and reads it.

Satisfied, I head to break. I head for the kitchen, still debating whether to tell the other temps about the revealing conversation I had with Amber last Friday night.

My footsteps, however, would have felt a lot heavier if I had realized what I had just done.

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Week Two, Night Five

Main Floor, 5:29pm

It’s Friday night and the regular day staff are pumped. They are wrapping up their shifts as we arrive and hear the loud, excited chatter on the floor.

“They’ve already drunk almost everything I bought. I’ll have to pick up more on the way home,” says a tiny, pretty Asian woman in tight clothes and high heeled black boots, hanging up her phone. She brings up her Smurfs screensaver on her computer and pushes past me in her hurry to get out the door.

“Good luck,” I mumble, not sure if she was talking to me or to just thinking out loud.

I put down my bags and glance at the day staff member next to me. It’s impossible not to look at her plunging cleavage, though I quickly force my gaze back up to her eyes, which are glaring into mine.

We both know what the other is thinking as we size each other up.

Skank, I think, looking at her.

Mum, she thinks, looking at me.

I attempt to toss my hair (it’s not long enough) and turn back to the computer. But it’s slow to open the programs, so I swivel my chair around to take in a bit more of the scene on the floor.

There’s Mike, standing very tall in his usual black attire, though he’s added a black jacket and he looks like he’s been awake for more than a few hours.

“Got plans with my girlfriend tonight,” he booms to anyone within hearing distance, which is most of the twenty or thirty people still on the floor.

I look over to Melissa, but her back is turned to me and she’s in a huddle with Courtney. I’m sure she’s heard him — everyone has — but I can’t see her reaction.

Is she disappointed? She’s got to be, with the way he’s been flirting with her for the past couple of weeks.

Mike carries on, announcing to no one in particular that he’s got to get a present for his girlfriend’s birthday before he meets up with her tonight.

I sneak another look at Melissa but she’s still bent low over her desk, whispering with Courtney, and her long hair is covering her face.

I frown at my screen, though it’s not because of the hourglass hanging in the center. Gee, Mike, what a hero you are, announcing to everyone that you’ve got a girlfriend, being the open and up front boyfriend, wow, nice acting job there. Too bad you waited on your announcement long enough to lead on one of our more vulnerable temps. Hope you had fun with your little game, dude. Yeah, that’s right, just stride out of here with your head held high, Mr. I’m Such a Good Guy.

“What’s with you?” asked Sara, stopping by my desk.

“Nothing,” I muttered, seeing Amber get off the phone a couple of desks away. “See you at break.”

6:34pm, Hallway

I come out of the restroom and bump into Justin, who is loitering.

Purposefully.

“I got offered a job,” he says, “but don’t tell anyone.”

“What? Here? Full time?”

“Yeah, but they said I can’t tell you guys. I guess I’m not very good at that part.”

I blinked.

“When did they offer it to you?”

“Tonight. Just now.”

“Well, that’s great.” I look at him uncertainly. I really have no idea how good he is at this job as he sits so far away from the rest of us. I guess I should just assume he’s really good at it. Or maybe it’s some kind of equal opportunity thing, as with Derek gone, Justin is the only male in the group of fourteen. No, I should assume he’s good at it. I have to assume he’s better at it than me.

“So are you going to take it?”

“Only if they pay eighty.”

“Eighty thousand a year? You do realise this is customer service, right? That’s probably more than Amber makes.”

He is unruffled.

“I don’t care.”

I can’t hide my grin.

“Have you, uh, told them of your demands yet?”

“Haven’t had a chance yet.”

“Well…let me know how it goes.” I can’t wait to hear how that conversation goes. I’m going to have to ask Steffi to show me her technique for listening through the walls.

“Okay.” He falls into stride alongside me as I head back to the main floor.

“But remember, don’t tell anyone,” he cautions me.

“You can trust me,” I assure him.

Break Room, 7:01pm

I walk in and there they are, three huge metal boxes. I hurry over to the middle one, scan scan it has to be here come on where is it I know you’re aha! G6. See you in a minute.

I stand up and walk over to the others, my mood vastly improved.

“You guys! Did you see? Vending machines!”

No one looks up and they keep talking in a huddle, voices low.

I start digging in my handbag for change and then look up, impatient.

“Hello? Vending machines? Anyone?”

Sara looks up. “Jobs. More people got offered jobs tonight.” Her face is clouded.

I put down my bag and pull up a chair.

“Who?”

Sara tonelessly lists off about half of the group. When she reaches the end of the list, I am deflated.

“But — but –”

“I know.”

A few of the others look up and I rearrange my features into what I hope is a supportive expression.

“Way to go, guys.”

I am happy for them. I really like this group, and they deserve to have good things happen to them.

And besides, I’m not a competitive person.

It’s just that I’m better than most of them!

Justin wanders into the break room.

“What’s going on?

He is informed of the others who got full time jobs.

“Oh, I did too,” he tells them. “But I’m not taking it for less than eighty.”

The temps’ laughter drowns out the sound of my footsteps as I slink out of the break room, determined to talk to Amber while everyone else is still back there.

Main Floor, 7:09pm

I enter the aisle where Amber sits and see, to my irritation, that one of the temps is still sitting there.

“Hi Christiane. You know it’s break, right?”

She turns and bestows a beatific smile.

“Yes, thank you,” she says, and turns and goes back to her work. I hesitate, but I can’t think of anything else to do to persuade her to leave. She often works through break.

I give up and take the few steps to Amber’s cube. She has her back turned to me and is pounding away on the keyboard.

“Amber? Would you have a minute?”

“Yes,” comes the reply, in an uninviting tone. She continues looking at her screen and her data entry does not slow down.

I take a second to translate what I want to say — WTF? — into Execu-Speak. It’s been years since I spoke Execu-Speak. But it’s not hard to remember.

“I have noticed that some of the other temps have been offered full time positions. I wanted to ask if I should be concerned about my performance here,” I say, trying to keep my voice low so that Christiane cannot hear the exchange.

Amber gives a short, humorless laugh.

“Oh, you would know by now if I had concerns about your performance. Believe me, you would know,” she tells her computer screen.

I wait to see if she is going to say anything else.

She stops typing, flicks over a piece of paper, and pushes her chair back.

“No, don’t worry,” she says, looking at me, and I wish I had remembered to tell her my name, but it’s a bit late now.

I also wish she would keep her voice down, but she speaks at normal volume, which suddenly sounds loud on the silent main floor.

“We’ve only offered two jobs so far,” she says loudly. “The others, it’s only been a preliminary conversation, just to see their level of interest in staying on full time. We’re just making a list, so we’ve got their names in case some more full time jobs come open.”

I try to think but my head feels slow and muddled.

“I thought there were fourteen full time jobs?”

Amber shook her head and turned back to her computer.

“No. Victor’s here to shake this place up, so a lot of things are up in the air right now. There might be more full time jobs by the time you guys finish your assignment. But right now all we’re doing is talking to people.”

“Just keep doing what you’re doing,” she said, and started typing again.

“Okay..thanks,” I said, and started walking back to my cube, too absorbed in my own thoughts to even pay attention anymore to whether Christiane had overhead the conversation.

I sat down heavily in my seat as the others filed in from the break room and scattered out to their desks.

I motioned to Sara, who was still looking upset, and she walked past.

“Got something to tell you when shift is over,” I whispered to her.

Tags: The Secret Temp by Paul // Add a comment »