Switching to Kevin’s POV:

Finally, Friday arrived and I was unnerved to find that not only had Josh and David not shown up to work, but that two other new hires had also not shown up. Perhaps there is a flu bug going around, I thought. At least Ravi, an Indian-American and the youngest new hire of the group and my neighboring cube mate, was there, though he appeared to be too busy to even have any small talk.

It was mid-morning when Andra came to my desk and, as was her friendly and fun nature, sat on the side counter of my cubicle desk, legs crossed Indian-style. She was wearing her typical fleece pullover and stretchy trousers, her feet bare as she had taken off her sandals first (did I mention she liked to dress casually). As was not atypical of her, she wore a thin dark tiara which she wore high on her forehead and over her ears. It highlighted her beautifully tanned face and the bright smile she wore as I turned my attention from my monitor towards her. I liked when she was like this – she seemed more akin to a teenage girl than my boss and it typically allowed me to drop my guard.

She made small talk with me for a couple minutes, which wasn’t unusual. Her typical routine was to put one at ease before discussing business. “Were you able to watch that movie the other night, the stylish action movie that has both black-and-white and color?”, she inquired, looking for a moment like she had genuine interest.

“Sin City? Yep”, I replied after she nodded.

“Yay. And? Any good?”

"Oh yeah. You should see it. It’s got a lot of action in it, but also some sexy parts. I was thinking about asking Jenny if she…”

“TMI! TMI!”, Andra declared, waving her hand dismissively. I didn’t know what had caused her to react thus, but it caused me to laugh.

Andra then turned to the business at hand, her face taking on a more serious expression.

“So, Kev, how’s the report coming?”, she asked perkily. She liked to call me by my nickname when she wanted something or when we were gossiping casually on mornings before work and I accepted the greeting warmly.

“Oh, I haven’t started on it yet. How soon do you need it? It doesn’t usually take me too long to run it.”

A slight frown came over her face. “I need it this afternoon. I have a meeting with Tiffany this evening and since it’s month end, we’ll need those numbers. This report is a very big deal for her and she needs those numbers for future planning. I don’t want you waiting til the last minute on it.”

Tiffany was one of the department’s two directors as well as Andra’s boss.

 "Oh shoot. I didn’t even think of that”, I said, feeling a nervous tingle go down my spine, adding, “I haven’t even been brought up to speed on how to run the month-end numbers.”

 "What?! I thought that you and David already covered that?!”

I could see that Andra was clearly not pleased and I hated to give her any news that made her unhappy. “Uh…we…we were supposed to go over some things Wednesday, but David never showed up”, I stuttered, feeling a bit uncomfortable.

“Well, did you call him? Perhaps he worked from home that day?”

“Uh…no”, I replied, sheepishly. Theoretically, he being the more senior engineer, I thought he would be expected to be the more responsible one. I did feel somewhat guilty, regardless, since technically, I was the employee and he the consultant.

“Dammit Kevin!”, she half-whispered, “I need you to take some initiative. Why don’t you go ahead and dig in to the code and see if you can figure it out. Is David in the office today?”

“Er…”, I peeked over the wall of my cube, straining my height on my tip-toes, “…I don’t think so. Haven’t seen him all morning or even heard anyone over there.”

Andra scrunched up one side of her face, lifting her lip on that side and wrinkling that side of her nose slightly. I couldn’t describe why, but I always found it endearing when she did that, part of her fun personality. Not realizing I was staring, I found myself drawn to her mock sneer, finding a sensual sense of mystery behind those luscious lips.

Perhaps noticing my stare, she broke into a warm smile, showing off her pearly whites.

“Alright, well, if you need to, give him a call, but don’t wait too long. And let me know if you run into any obstacles. If you have to skip lunch, than go ahead and do so. Once you finish the reports, you can take off early. Here, go ahead and take this water.” Smiling, she handed me a bottle of water. “It’s very important to stay hydrated.”

“Thank you”, I said meekly.

“No. Thank YOU”, she replied as she left.

--

With a sense of urgency, I began scrambling through the report code, but I quickly became frustrated. I could see where the inputs and outputs for the month-end totals were coming from, but they were dynamically allocated linkages and one would need to have some knowledge of where the physical locations of these linkages resided. Without this knowledge, typically given by the systems expert and learned by other engineers through osmosis (aka, on the job training over time), I was not going to be able to find out the information by myself, no matter how much effort I put into it.

I immediately dialed David, trying repeatedly, but couldn’t get into contact with him. With time now becoming a factor, having looked through the code for over an hour, I walked over to Andra’s office only to find the door closed. I heard heated voices behind it and decided not to bother her during an apparent meeting.

Going back to my desk, I instant messaged her that I had indeed run into an obstacle, telling her that I needed someone with expert knowledge of the system. I explained I wouldn’t need too much of that person’s time; just a little knowledge transfer. She messaged me back that she was in meeting, but that she would get Jenny to come over to my desk. That made me relax a little. I liked Jenny a lot. She was pretty and a young go-getter who seemed to know her way around the system, although she’d only been with the company a little over a year.

--

In the meantime, I began looking at the programs for the project I was on.

It wasn’t too long before Helen stopped by.

“How’s things going newbie?” It was her typical greeting for me.

“Not too bad, Helen, I’m just looking through our program now.”

“Have you got it to produce data yet? I promised Doug (the project manager) that we’d have input into the business unit streams today”, she said, looking at me expectantly.

Sighing, I explained to her that most of my focus that day was in trying to get the financial reports run in Josh’s absence. I told her that I had run into a stumbling block because it required expertise I did not have. “It’s really not fair – I’m not even the one who’s supposed to be running reports this week and it’s eaten into my project time”, I complained.

“Don’t look at me”, she said, “I’m not the one you have to convince.” With a wink, she left.

I was happy that she had accepted my response for why I hadn’t made more progress on the project work, but I was a bit disturbed by her wink and lack of empathy for my plight. What did that mean?, I wondered.

I continued working on the code for a while longer, waiting for the reinforcements to come.

After a half hour, I received a call from Andra. “Can you come to my office?”

I didn’t detect any anger, so I wondered why she wanted me to come to her office. She didn’t even ask me for my status first.

--

She waited for me by her door, ushering me to a seat and then closing the door behind us as she sat down behind her thick mahogany desk. Her office was not large, at about 15 feet wide by 20 feet deep. A tall filing cabinet was on one wall opposite her desk, with her desk pushed up against the other wall, leaving just a few feet for her to move around it. She had other smaller filing cabinets on her side of the desk. There were typically two spartan chairs on the visiting side of the desk, though a couple more could squeeze in if need be, and if it was a larger group, she would add a chair to her side.

It was really a utilitarian office, with a smaller desk with her computer near the back window which overlooked one portion of the large parking lot at three stories up. What I never quite understood was the plaster piping which came in from the ceiling and wound down to the side of her desk near the wall, continuing underneath it. I had meant to ask her about these pipes (I’d seen them in other’s offices as well), but I was certain this was not the time to do so.

I glanced briefly at the small bin of Laffy Taffy; the miniature dolphin figurine next to it made me smile.

For a couple moments, Andra didn’t say anything, just looked at me. It was awkward to say the least.

“Were you able to work on the reports?”, she asked.

“For the most part. I did spend a bit of time on Helen’s project. She asked me to look into creating input for the downstreams…”, I began.

"Kevin, I told you the top priority were the month-end reports”, she interjected.

“Yeah. I know. It was just fifteen minutes or so and I told Helen I couldn’t spend any more time on her stuff until after I’d produced the report”, I responded defensively.

“Did you run the financial reports or not?”, she asked, matter-of-factly, her expression neutral.

I started to answer, “Andra, you know…”.

“Kevin, it really shouldn’t be all that difficult”, she cut me off, detecting the reasoning tone in my voice. Her tone was one of admonishment.

“Uh sure, Andra, here they are”, I said, my hands empty as I mimed handing her the invisible report. I was a bit perturbed now and let the situation get the better of me. I liked Andra and didn’t want to ruffle her feathers, so I continued, softening my tone “No, when I run the report, the month-end totals are the exact same as last month’s. I don’t know the physical location of the input and output folders.”

“Kevin!”, she said sternly, disappointment evident in her voice. She shook her head for a moment. “Can you say ‘looooser’?”, she said softly, elongating the word. Her eyes didn’t really seem to be viewing me, but looking through me rather. It was as if she had made her mind up about something and would live with the consequences.

“Well, I did as much as I could in looking through the code”, I explained.

“Excuses, excuses”, she muttered, looking me in the eyes.

“I..I thought you were going to send Jenny over?”, I said, trying to switch gears to take a little heat off.

“Yeah, she was too busy to help out.” She kept looking at me for a few more moments, biting her lower lip.

“Hmmmpf, I was kinda hoping you’d be the one to make it. Looks like Ravi will be the one getting the promotion. Alright, I’m getting hungry and I still need to meet with my boss, so why don’t you go ahead and report to HR. I’ll go ahead and notify them you’re on your way. And Kevin”, she continued, as I had already reached her door, “don’t dawdle. We’ll worry about your stuff at your desk later. Right now, the only stuff I’m concerned with is you. So get your little behind down there pronto, kay.”

Geez, I thought as she closed her office door behind me, this had been the strangest and most humiliating day of my professional life. And what the heck do I care if she’s hungry now that I’m being let go?

--

As I made my way towards HR,  I walked down the stairs and came across Jenny in the central stair hub, who seemed in a happy mood.

“Hey Kev, how’s it hanging?”. Jenny asked. She could get a bit crass sometimes, but usually in a playful manner.

“Not well”, I told her, “I was supposed to run a report for Andra, but I couldn’t find where the data was located.”

“Awww, that’s too bad”, she replied, seemingly unconcerned. “Hey, did you hear about Ravi? There’s a rumor going around that he’s been seeing Jessica.” Jessica was one of the project leads on another project, a pretty girl, but the least of my concerns at present.

I tried to get Jenny to focus. Maybe she could help me out. “So, you know anything about the month-end report data?”

“Oh that, sure”, she said, “I probably could have helped you out, but I was trying to find out if the scoop with Ravi was true. The reports - It’s a piece of cake. You just need to drop in the new data files. But I wouldn’t worry about it now. Andra just asked me to go ahead and run the reports. I heard you were being sent to HR.”

“Uh, unfortunately, yep”, I said, disconsolate. Jenny seemed to be in the know on all the company’s inner workings.

“Hmmm, by chance, do you know if Andra has eaten yet?”, she asked.

I found it a peculiar question for her to ask me at the present time. “No…uh, I don’t think so. She mentioned something about being hungry.”

She gave me a bit of a sad pouty look, then taking a step back, she seemed to give me an appraising look from head to toe.

“Well, it was nice working with you. Enjoy the termination process – I hear it’s a doozy”, she said, opening her mouth wide and sticking her tongue out at me and giggling as she walked up the stairs.

  (Jenny on the stairs)

Needless to say, I found her callousness at my situation to be more than a little disturbing. I turned and continued down the stairs, where I would walk across the large open atrium area to the Human Resources department.

--