I've been an accountant at The Company for about three years now. That's five days a week, two hundred sixty days a year (I have never taken PTO... I am too nervous to ask my boss), totaling to almost eight hundred entire days on the premises. All that time, and still, if you ever happened upon my cubicle, you might believe it to be some abandoned relic –– a ghost of employees past that hasn't been inhabited in eons.
Adorning the laminate surface sits an ancient 2000s Dell computer, a corded telephone, and an organizer filled with Post-Its, Sharpies, and other various supplies. The only touch of decorum to the beige polyester panel walls are a few papers detailing important bills that have long since been paid as well as a calendar from the year I started which I haven't found the time to replace. As for personal flair, the space completely lacks any sign of it. That is, unless you count the many distorted paperclips I twist up when I'm nervous –– which now completely litter the desk space –– as flair.
It isn't that I don't want to feel at home here or anything, I just never got around to decorating. During my first few weeks it was on my to-do list to go shopping for a few trinkets, maybe a salt lamp or something, but then quarter close came up and I forgot all about it. Turns out, quarter close is an extremely busy time for accounting, since we need to make sure a million payments from the other departments are going out and processing and blah blah blah. There was no time anymore to stop at Home Goods or Staples on the way home –– all I had time for was crawling into bed and putting on an episode of Seinfeld or something mindless . Once we finally got out on the other side of the chaos, I'd grown so accustomed to my cube space, minimalistic as it was, that I decided, whatever. A space is a space. It wasn't worth the extra effort or money anymore.
Emma used to bring me Sticky Notes with drawings on them to spruce the place up. She had this recurring character she'd draw who looked like a cloud with an unnerving smile, and he'd always be doing office tasks like stapling papers or giving a presentation to a group of other clouds. I threw them all out one morning last year after she made a comment on how stripe-y my sweater was. There was this upswing in her voice at the end of the word, stripe-y, and for whatever reason it just devastated me. I needed any remnant of the old Emma to be gone.
There are no assistants in the accounting department, only accountants and junior accountants who make up their team. But if I'm honest, I'm not sure my boss realizes this, what with the amount of scheduling, booking, and various odd jobs he has me do for him on a daily basis. I singlehandedly coordinated his family's entire Christmas vacation to Italy last year. Gondola rentals and wine tours included.
Today, he is expecting me to play God. Specifically, Demeter.
"Hi!" I chirp into my headset, grossly saccharine. Customer service voice. "Do you happen to have any leis in stock?"
"Any what?"
"Leis. Like, tropical leis."
The other line pauses fo. There's the faint sound of rustling papers and murmuring. Then, "How many?"
"About ten to fifteen."
"Sure. When do you need them by?"
"Three PM?"
"Tomorrow?"
"Well, today, if possible."
Another pause. A much longer one, this time. I can almost feel the dubious stare through the phone.
After a whole minute, I ask, "Are you still there?"
"Ma'am. We typically need around twenty-four hours of notice on these kinds of requests at this time of year," the florist says. "We have to order the orchids."
"Do you have anything orchids stock right now?"
"No."
"Well, okay," I say. "Thanks."
I hang up and cross out ROYAL COURT FLORISTS on my ever-growing list of flower shops in the city. A similar conversation has played out with the thirteen places I've called before Royal Court (it's November, for God's sake, no one has a bunch of Hawaiian leis on hand!) and yet I cannot relent until I've tried every single place.
Why am I looking for leis? Some vague, undisclosed event my boss will be attending tonight. Apparently, his job is to bring the fucking florals. So now, the job is mine.
SONNY'S FLOWERS is the next victim on the list. As I dial the number, I think about the thirty-seven invoices in my inbox that are at least two weeks overdue. I should be working on those getting out for payment. That is, after all, my real job.
Alas...
"Hi there! I was wondering if you had any leis in stock?"
I can only presume Sonny himself is on the phone with me. He scoffs. "It's not graduation season."
"So is that a no?" I ask.
"That's a no, ma'am."
I hate how all these people are calling me ma'am. It's like staring down the barrel of my youth and... I don't know, realizing I've already been shot of out the gun. I mean, I've become somebody who calls florists. Kids don't do that. Ma'ams do.
As I'm crossing out Sonny's name and prepping to dial the number for BIG APPLE FLORALS (mind you, we don't even live in New York...), my boss's head suddenly pokes up at front of my cube –– a maneuver that's quite the jump scare when you're slacking off and playing Tetris.
"How's it going?" he asks. "Any leis?"
"It's the off-season for those types of orchids, so most florists in town needed a day or two's notice."
"That's not what I asked."
"Right." I refer to my notes. "There's...There's a place on the east side that has enough orchids to make a lei."
"A lei?"
"Yes."
"Well, I can't bring one."
"I know that," I say. "But I have that lei on hold and I'm looking for more. I might be able to find "
He wipes his forehead, perturbed. Since we are approaching the final quarter close of the year, I'm choosing to believe his stress is angled at that and not me. "I'm not sure I'm going to be able to visit a bunch of flower shops to pick all these up," he says. "I need to be on the road at four."
"I'll do my best to find one place," I assure him. I gesture to the list, and all the ones I have left to call. "One of these places is bound to have your leis."
"Okay," he says. "Is lunch coming soon?"
"Should be getting here in about five minutes."
"Okay."
His head drops down, out of my cube's sight.
As always, no thank you. It's been long enough that I know shouldn't expect one, but still. It would be nice.
You know, I heard it in a college seminar once that your first job out of college should be a one-year thing. Just a steppingstone to help you grow your confidence in the corporate world. By the time you've reached the annual mark, the speaker said, you ought to have made enough connections in your office that one of them could either point you in the direction towards a new company, or help you secure a promotion.
My boss is definitely a lost cause there. I'm the longest second-in-command he's ever had; all the others quit around the one-year mark. I strongly doubt he'd ever consider promoting me for fear that no one else might ever put up with him.
I'd really hoped when I started that Emma would be that connection for me. I was kind of banking on her to help me hitch a ride out of here one day –– to swoop into the annex dancing, waving dollar bills, proclaiming that she'd won the lottery and wanted to save me from my misery. But that's all over now, and so there's no one else in the office I can really qualify as a connection. I just don't feel like I connect with any of them.
For one, most of the people in my general area are in an entirely different stage of life. Half the people in the cubicles around me have been working here for twenty, thirty plus years. I'm not really offended by the fact that I'm not besties with them or anything. Every so often, though, in the kitchens or the break rooms, I'll happen upon some of the other people in Emma's suite –– the marketing suite –– who are younger and hungrier and probably all the more worthwhile for connections, and... I can't possibly pluck up the courage to approach them. They scare me like the pack of middle school girls who start giggling when you pass them on the street.
Just as I'm about to try for BIG APPLE, I get an incoming call –– the food delivery is arriving early. Thank heavens. My trip downstairs to pick up my boss' food us just about my favorite time of day, because it's just the only break from my desk that I get. For that reason, I always opt out of using the elevator in favor of the stairwell, to elongate the trip. Plus, nobody ever uses the stairs. The echoes are kind of peaceful.
My boss is always pretty picky with his orders, so I usually have to check everything in the bag before I can let the delivery driver leave. For the last eight months or so, more often than not, the driver is the same person –– this budding-musician-slash-college-dropout named Oliver. Since he looks like the type of guy to headline a Warped Tour (i.e., the type of guy I wanted to run away with and marry in high school), I immediately developed a debilitating and all-encompassing crush the first time I saw him and have been painfully maladroit in our interactions ever since. But Oliver keeps up a fine enough rapport for the both of us, luckily, and he knows the drill with my boss by now.
"One garden harvest salad, add diablo chicken, remove the tomatoes and onions," he says, holding up the bowl and a tiny container of orange liquid. "Citrus vinaigrette on the side."
"And the focaccia?" I ask.
He waves a small paper bag. "Affirmative."
"And the soup?"
"They were all out."
I narrow my eyes at him. I believe I'm trying to come off as playful in some way, but the execution is far too squinty.
"You're not going to trick me with that again," I say.
Oliver's laugh is singsong-y in a way that makes me wish his music was more unplugged. I've researched his band extensively (their name is Storm Something, they formed in 2017 after becoming friends in their high school science class, their first show was a basement gig for the local college...) and there isn't a single track, released or Soundcloud demo, where he isn't either straining his voice or outright screaming. A true punk artist. I imagine he must secretly hate my guts for working for The Man.
"Fine, you got me, you got me," he says, and pulls out the container for me to inspect. "One cup of creamy tomato soup. I still don't understand how that could possibly pair well with the diablo chicken."
"It's what he likes," I say.
"It's what he likes," Oliver parrots.
He hands me the bag with a smile. I open my mouth to speak, but I the words dissolve into thin air. This would probably be the right time to ask about his music, but what would I even say? What if he doesn't remember that he told me he was a musician?
"What's up?" he asks.
I give up and resolve to ask him this question another time. I need to get back to my desk to find those damn leis, anyway.
"Nothing," I say. "Pleasure doing business."
Oliver salutes. "Until next time, comrade."
As I'm heading back into the building with the lunch bag, a trio of people from the marketing department are on their way out, headed to a restaurant off-site. Two boys and a girl, all dressed sharply in blazers and slacks even though our office isn't super strict about that kind of thing. The taller, blond boy holds open the door for me to run in, and each one of them seems to take their turn looking me up and down while I pass with blank, unreadable stares. Immediately I am convinced, they're judging me and the snags on my sweater. I've got chills all the way to my scalp by the time I make it back to the stairwell.
My boss is unenthused by his soup and salad, and is more so vexed that I haven't figured out the lei situation. I skip lunch and spent the entire hour on the phone, being scolded by at least twenty florists for even deigning to make such a last-minute orchid request at this time of year. But between three places, all on the east side, I'm able to scrounge up a baker's dozen.
"Thirteen?" my boss asks.
"You wanted between ten and fifteen," I say. "That's directly in between."
He considers this, then shrugs. "Sure. Can you pick them up?"
The trip takes over an hour. I have to wait a couple minutes in each parking lot for the florists to craft the leis by hand. During that time, I scrounge up a lunch for myself using the stores nearby –– a Diet Coke at the first place, a caprese sandwich at the second, and a snickerdoodle cookie at the third. Wouldn't normally be my first option for a cookie, but it was the only one the café had left. It tasted fine, if not a bit dry.
The same gang of marketing people I saw earlier are only just trickling back in from their lunch as I'm returning. A two-hour lunch. On a workday! I'm awed by the mere idea of it. From the looks of them, grinning back and forth at one another, all pink in the cheeks, it appears they might've even had a drink or two.
A drink or two!
I want to be inconspicuous coming in, so as to avoid another stare-down from the trio, but with thirteen purple and white leis hanging from both my arms, the feat is good as impossible. From the moment they step out of their car, they're squinting at me, picking up their pace to get a better look. Much to my dismay, I can't feasibly trek the flowers up nine flights of stairs, so I'm forced hop in the elevator with them.
It's quiet for a few seconds before one of them, the blond boy who held the door for me earlier, asks the obvious question.
"Are those leis?"
"They are," I say.
"Why...?"
"My boss."
Apparently, no further explanation is required here. The group ignores me for the rest of the elevator ride, and when the doors swing open, I feel oddly enough like I'd failed some sort of top-secret Socializing Test. Should I have made more eye contact when answering them? Was there something more I could've said?
My boss leaves around thirty minutes after I bring the leis up. I'd nearly expected him to ask me to tag along to the event, don an apron, and hand the damn things out, but luckily, no dice. Now, I've got roughly three more hours of the workday to finally, finally start getting my real work done. And since I know I'll regret slacking off and saving all of it for Monday, I put my headphones in and force myself to focus, tearing through invoices one by one, line by line, until my back hurts from hunching and my eyes are sore.
On the drive back home (very minimal traffic today –– looking to be forty minutes clean, thank god), I get quite the earful from Emma about the group I ran into on the elevator. She's absolutely beside herself.
"They were literally drunk. In the office! Stumbling and snickering with each other! It was so unprofessional!"
"You know, people used to drink alcohol in the office all the time," I say. "Especially marketing people."
"That's not true," Emma insists.
"They do it on Mad Men."
"Well, there's a reason why they stopped that. It was embarrassing." She shakes her head, then shudders, as though her body is physically rejecting the memory. "It was so... childish."
"A cardinal sin," I say.
Emma gives me a stern look. "You would've thought the same thing as me if you saw them, Ty. Seriously."
Well, I did see them, I think to myself, so as not to rile Emma any further. I thought they were cool. The way you used to be.
Emma details her plans to go to HR on Monday about the disturbance, as she's calling it. "If I go tomorrow, they might forget to do anything about it over the weekend..." she insists. I humor her with questions and nods, carefully watching the billboards we go by on the freeway instead of any of the cars. God forbid any of them have bumper stickers for me to get fixed on. By the time I drop her off at The Hive –– the name of the positively massive apartment complex on Park Ave that she lives in –– Emma has convinced herself that she can get her three coworkers good as fired by Monday. And to think, there was once a time when she believed in the phrase snitches get stitches.