Musical Chairs

‘So, Jessy...’

‘Jessica. It’s Jessica, actually,’ she gently reminded Mr. Prior with a genial smile.

Staring back blankly, Mr. Prior continued, ‘I would like you to move your desk to the corner of the Accounting pod. The empty desk beside Richard...’ Mr. Prior paused and looked across the open plan office, his eyes falling on a thin red-headed man pecking away at his computer keyboard. It was apparent he couldn’t remember Richard’s last name.

‘Burlington or Cary?’ Jessica offered in assistance, despite knowing exactly who he was referring to.

‘Cary. Yes, Richard Cary.’

At the sound of his name, Richard looked up nervously and craned his neck around, unsure of who called him. When he saw Jessica and Mr. Prior staring at him, he smiled and waved hesitantly, as if greeting a stranger on the subway that looks familiar.

Jessica smiled back.

‘No problem, Mr. Prior. Do you want me to move today or by week’s end?’

‘Can you manage it in an hour? The new marketing guy will be here at 10. So, before then.’

An hour? Jessica smiled at Mr. Prior, as he walked away without so much as a “thank you”. She wished she was throwing knives at him instead. She had just gotten all her files out and organized them into the order they needed to be dealt with. Now it would be a mad dash to get everything off her desk before the new person arrived. And she’d have to stay late to get all her work done.

Moving wasn’t the necessarily the issue. She hated sitting in the middle of the Marketing pod and would be happy to be rid of them. They bathed in perfume and chatted incessantly. They were even worse now that they were working on a rebrand for the entire company. So excited. Like a pack of Chihuahuas fed a diet of coffee beans. More irritating was that she was Operations and had already been moved from the Ops pod to the Business Development pod to the Marketing pod. Each time she lost days of productivity and her absence from Ops was beginning to affect her interactions with the other members of the team. Half the time they didn’t even know where to find her.

Jessica located a cardboard box in the copy room and loaded it with the contents of her desk. Files. Personal office supplies that she bought to add a little personality to her desk. Framed photo of her and her brother at Maroon Bells ski resort last season. Three little plastic dinosaurs, one from each of her nieces. A bag of individually wrapped chocolate mints. She only ate one a day, enough to satisfy her sweet tooth after lunch, yet not enough to contribute to an office worker fat bottom.

She migrated her box of belongings to the desk next to Richard. Looking back at her old station, she briefly considered not wiping off the light dust and crumb residue that had accumulated in the corners. No one should start a new job with a dirty desk. From her office supplies she plucked the sanitizing wipes and gave her old desk a quick once over. Turning back to her new desk, she sighed. Too bad the person before her didn’t feel the same way she did. Pulling out two more wipes, she scrubbed away the dust, coffee rings, and some sort of sticky gunk from the desk top. Richard gave her a sympathetic smile.

‘Ben was a little gross. Nothing toxic. He just liked to drink cocoa in the afternoon,’ he explained.

Ah, the sticky gunk. Jessica shook off a grimace and gave Richard a smile then said, ‘I guess I’m your new neighbor. I’m quiet. You won’t even know I am here.’

Richard nodded and said, ‘Good.’

Jessica couldn’t hide the discouragement that swept across her face.

Richard quickly added, ‘No, no, I didn’t mean it that way. Feel free to talk. It’s just that Sunil and I have to prepare the annual report, so we will be ignoring you for the next couple of weeks.’

A balding man popped up over the divider at the sound of his name. ‘Hi, I’m Sunil.’

Jessica smiled, ‘Hi. I recognize you from the break room. I’m Jessica.’

‘Welcome to the Accounting pod. Hope the chatter about balance sheets and depreciation doesn’t drive you mad.’

With a quick laugh she replied, ‘I’m sure it will be riveting.’

***

‘So, Jess…’

‘It’s Jessica.’

‘I know you have only been sitting here a few days, but I’m going to move you again. Sorry about that.’ There was no hint of regret in Mr. Prior’s voice. ‘We have an auditor visiting for a couple of weeks and he really needs to be near the Accounting pod. Richard gave Jessica a quick look that resembled a scolded dog. Accounting was under the gun. They found an anomaly in the annual financial report. No one would say what the anomaly was, but Richard and Sunil had been working longer hours and took fewer breaks as they tried to sort it out. Jessica returned a sympathetic smile.

‘Sure. No problem, Mr. Prior.’

Jessica retrieved another box from the copy room, though it was more difficult to find one than the last time. Fewer boxes of paper seemed to be laying around now. Taking the box back to her desk, she set it down and loaded in her files, office supplies, framed photo, dinosaurs, and chocolate. The bag of chocolate was considerably lighter. She’d been sharing her candy with the guys, since it seemed to reduce their stress level.

After she cleared out her space, she waved to Mr. Prior, who had wandered off to talk to the new Marketing guy. Maybe this time she would be able to move back to the Ops pod. Things had been relatively disorganized lately. If they were all together, they could work on stream lining some of their processes. What manager didn’t like cost saving efficiency?

‘Where would you like me to move? Back to Ops?’

‘Near Sheri,’ Mr. Prior replied, waving his hand toward a heavily made up older woman fiddling with her earring. Sheri? She was in the Admin pod. Admin consisted of half a dozen near retirement aged women that cooed over pictures of grandchildren, read smutty romance novels, and sold scented candles or Avon on the side to pay for their annual trip to the beach. Why was he putting her in the Admin pod?

Jessica place her box of belongings on her new desk.

‘So, you keep getting moved around, huh? Musical chairs!’ Sheri was twisting her hoop bracelets around, leaning over the divider between their stations.

‘Yep, good thing I don’t have a lot to move,’ replied Jessica, her eyes darting to the dozen or so little porcelain figurines and miniature flower vases that populated the periphery of Sheri’s desk.

Sheri laughed a little and looked back at her collection. ‘My home away from home. I spend so much time here, I might as well give it a personal touch. Right?’

Jessica nodded in agreement.

‘So why did you get moved again?’

She didn’t have an answer for Sheri’s questions. Jessica considered herself a hard worker, very thorough and efficient. She felt like she had a firm grasp of the company’s operational landscape, both functional and financial. Her line manager never seemed unhappy with her, just slightly annoyed by her occasional burst of questions or suggestions. Nothing out of the ordinary though.

‘I don’t know. Maybe the Ops pod is too small for the number of people we have.’

Sheri gave her a skeptical look followed by a quick, forced smile then sat back down on her wheelie chair and glided back to her station. It was the smile that made Jessica a little paranoid. Was she being moved around for another reason? What was the last thing she did before they moved her out of the Ops pod? Jessica racked her brain. She pulled together the projections for the next quarter and gave them to Mr. Prior. Was there something in her report that drew negative attention? What was going on?

‘Um, Sheri, out of curiosity, what’s going on with the paper supply? I really had to scrounge around for this box. It’s like we haven’t had new office supplies for a while.’

Sheri’s eyes sparkled, like a school girl with and exciting secret to share. She kicked her high heels against the carpet, propelling her chair back toward Jessica.

‘Well, you didn’t hear it from me, but we haven’t been able to place an order for weeks. Our bills are overdue and the office supplier won’t extend us anymore credit,’ she paused for dramatic effect then continued, ‘It isn’t just them. We’re over extended with most of our vendors. Corporate is coming into town next Thursday for an emergency review. It’s all hush-hush. Sunil in Accounting told me that someone has been cooking the books to hide the fact that a lot of money is missing. That’s why the auditor is here.’

***

‘Welcome to the company, Jessica. Here is your new desk. Office supplies are in the copy room, coffee and snacks are down the hall on the right. Toilets to the left of the elevator bank. If you need anything else, just ask your desk neighbors, Jade and Lenny.’ Mr. Sharpton said their names as he pointed to a slight woman with long hair and a sharply dressed dark-skinned man. Both smiled politely and waved. ‘I’ll be back to check on how you are settling in later and maybe you can give me a few hints on how to avoid the fate of your previous employer.’

Mr. Sharpton winked and smiled then left Jessica to unpack her personal belongings. From a canvas bag she retrieved a stack of multi-colored post-it notes, a handful of pens in a bamboo cup, a framed photo of her and her brother on the slopes, a small, plastic T-Rex, Stegosaurus, and Apatosaurus, and a brand new bag of individually wrapped chocolate mints.