“Are you a first aid officer?” a harried-looking man asked Mel.
She put down her phone reluctantly, her mind still on the book about an office romance. “Yes. What’s happened?” She rose from her seat expectantly.
The man led the way through the cubicle maze. “We’ve had another incident in the store room. One bloke’s unconscious and bleeding on the floor while one of the girls from HR has injured her wrist, apparently with one of her heels. She states that the injury was sustained in self defence…”
Mel hurried after him, her own heels padding on the carpeted floor. Something seemed very strange today.
The HR manager walked past, clutching a file to her chest and shaking her head. “This is bad, very bad. It’s the third one today - the tenth this week - and it’s only Tuesday…” she muttered to no one in particular.
Mel’s concern grew.
She stood in the doorway of the store room and stopped, stunned.
A man was indeed unconscious on the carpet, though his head and shoulders had landed on the bottom of one of the shelving units. Through his forearm was a red stiletto heel, the gel cushion insert hanging out like the man’s tongue. Blood seeped from his arm onto the pile of telephone message pads beneath him.
A slightly hysterical woman clutched a ream of paper to her chest, the fingers of one hand wrapped around the wrist of her other hand. “He deserved it! Thieving policy officer…”
Mel noticed blood and some of the man’s dark hair clinging to the wrapper around her ream of paper.
She pasted a soothing smile on her face and reached past the woman for one of the first aid kits. Between used files, telephone message books and the first aid kits, there wasn’t much else in there except injured people and empty shelves.
Without taking her eyes off the hysterical woman or the unconscious man, Mel said over her shoulder, “Could you call me an ambulance, please?” She looked at the woman, who was kicking off her other red heel, looking ready to use it. “Make that two ambulances, for two casualties?”
“Sure,” the uninjured man replied as he hurried away. Mel wished she could hurry off, too, but she was trained for this.
“May I?” she asked, extending her hand to the other woman.
“You can’t have it! We’re completely out!” the woman shouted.
Mel smiled her most angelic smile. “Not the paper. I’d like to examine your wrist.”
Mel prodded for a moment until the woman yanked her hand back with an exclamation. “It looks like a bad sprain. Best get you to hospital. Did you want to go wait in Reception?”
The woman gave a curt nod. “Right after I get this paper in the printer.” She marched off to HR, still hugging her ream of paper.
Mel turned her attention to the man on the floor. She didn’t know him, but she didn’t expect to – there were plenty of Hell Corporation policy officers she hadn’t met. She hoped he’d recover enough from his head injury to be able to tell her his name. Sighing, she lightly patted his face and hands. “Wake up, please, and tell me if you can hear me. Are you okay?”
The man groaned and moved, but he didn’t say anything she understood, so Mel repeated the exercise.
“Ffff…ucking bitch,” the man mumbled after a while.
Mel pressed her lips together. “Can you tell me your name?”
“Mo,” he mumbled.
“Mo? Your name is Mo?” Mel probed.
“Yyy…sss,” Mo replied with difficulty.
“Right, well, I’m Mel and I’ve called you an ambulance, which will take you to hospital so you can get checked out,” Mel told him.
“Good. Call….p..lice…too,” he mumbled.
“We’re sorting that out right now,” Mel said carefully.
Luckily, the ambulance officers didn’t take long and they took Mo away, relieving Mel of her responsibilities. She headed back to her desk, detouring to wash Mo’s blood off her hands first.
“Oh, Mel! Could you just sort and staple these documents in time for my meeting in five minutes?” Lili asked, looking flustered. She dumped the ream of printed paper on Mel’s desk and wandered off without waiting for Mel’s answer.
With a sigh, Mel pulled out her stapler and started dealing with the sheets.
She made it to a third of the way through before her stapler protested and died. Patiently, Mel tapped it on the desk and checked the staples. She added some more staples, just in case. The stapler didn’t do anything.
She peered into it and thought perhaps a staple had gotten jammed in it. Taking a her scissors, she tried to pry it out. No, the scissors are too big. I need something smaller like…
Mel picked up a pen and inserted the point into her stapler, trying to get the wayward stuck staple out. The pen point snapped, shattering the plastic with it. Mel dropped the pen into the bin by the desk. She searched her desk for a letter opener or something else she could use, but came up blank.
She headed over to Merih’s desk. “How do I order a new stapler and a pen to replace the one I just broke?” she asked.
He shrugged. “You can’t. You have to fix that one or do without.”
She stared at him. “What? I can’t have a new pen?”
He pulled up the internal network screen and tapped his monitor. “That’s why.”
"...the Minister has issued a media statement announcing immediate saving measures across Government. These measures include:
A temporary freeze on all expenditure on the procurement of non essential goods and services (consumables such as stationery, use of consultants, non-essential travel)” she read. Mel looked at Merih. “But stationery is essential! This is an office!”
Merih shrugged. “Apparently not, according to the Minister. Haven’t you noticed the fights breaking out in the store room where the stationery used to be kept?”
Oh.
Two hours later, Mel had taken her stapler apart, sustaining several bleeding cuts in the process, and reassembled it so it worked once more. Leaving bloody finger prints on Lili’s documents, she finished dealing with the papers and delivered them to Lili’s meeting. Then she went in search of a first aid kit to clean and cover her cuts.
By that time, the work day was over. She slipped her phone into her bag and lifted it onto her shoulder.
I’ve just wasted a whole work day over ten dollars worth of stationery – a stapler and a ream of paper. That’s…almost three hundred dollars of wasted time and money. How is that saving?
Hell will freeze over before I find out, she decided. Her laughter bubbled up as she realised. No, hell has already frozen over. At the Minister’s order.
YOU ARE READING
Mel Goes To Hell
Humor“Great, see you in hell at 9 on Monday morning!" Even working in hell has a funny side. Mel accepted a job in the Hell Corporation. The push for cost-cutting, consolidation and privatisation meant most government services were contracted out to one...
