“...off the phone with the Chinese liaison and they don’t know what happened any more than we do. Not to mention my Cantonese is rustier than I’d like. I don’t know if they were trying to set up a conference call at four o’clock on Friday, or if they were trying to order four more copies of the prints that Jamie sent over on Saturday. Damn translator is out sick. Like anyone gets bronchitis anymore?! Not to mention, they’ve sent over the mockups a full week early, and my backup girl from California has yet to make an appearance. Who’s this?”
The diatribe stopped suddenly, and I realized that all eyes were on me. I stood quickly and offered out a respectful hand. “I’m Jenna Harks. We had an appointment to—”
The receptionist cut me off. “Ms. Macer, this is the—”
“Wait—are you her?” Patti Macer, my hopeful soon-to-be supervisor, looked at me with wide eyes, magnified even wider under her glasses. The receptionist turned my way in slow motion behind her, and for a split second, I paused.
Let me preface this next part with: this is NOT my thing. I set my sights high, but I knew that in order to get there, I’d have to spend a few years slaving in the mines. I understood the importance of hard work—I placed a premium on integrity (even if saying those two things made me sound like I was running for head of the local school board). In other words, it was not in my nature to risk it all by going out on a limb.
That being said, I was a wildly overqualified candidate applying for a two-year minimum entry level grunt job just to get my foot in the door. In the door of a company full of rabid employees who would pounce on this opportunity if given it themselves. My mind flashed back to the girl, crying in the bathroom. She hadn’t told anyone she was going to leave. I hadn’t told anyone where I was headed.
A strange confidence brewed inside me and I shook Macer’s hand vigorously.
“Yes, I’m your girl.”
And just like that, I was whisked away. Up past the nameless cubicles, past the run-down coffee pots, the blood shot watering holes for grunts still pushing year one. All the way up to the seventieth floor. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, I’d jumped forty floors in ten minutes. Not bad for my first day on the job.
Patti Macer, my new supervisor, had been talking nonstop since my questionable introduction, and although I watched the ascending elevator floors with a fixed smirk, I was absorbing every word.
“So in short, we have about seven days to do close to two months of work. That’s why we called the west coast for some backup. If we can pull this off, it’ll be the third greatest merger in US history, falling short only to AOL/Time Warner and the Louisiana Purchase. Yes—we count that.” She shot me a look as the doors opened and she gestured down a hall. “You and your team are going to be crunching the numbers, cold hard facts. You’ll be writing the bulk of the merger yourself, literally finding a way to absorb the company without exceeding the hard limits set by the Chinese stockholders. But don’t worry about the technicalities or the spin—that’s why we have our PR and legal departments. Am I right?”
I nodded hastily. The higher up we’d gotten, the more papers she’d dumped into my hand. I was now a walking file cabinet, trying desperately to balance the small library she’d handed me while keeping pace and not tripping on my new heels. When she stopped suddenly, I almost had a coronary.
“This is going to be your office. Mine is right down the hall. The rest of the team is scattered around this floor. There’s a staff meeting every morning at eight and the work day begins at eight-thirty—not a second later. You okay with that?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but I was still staring into the office—stunned. You don’t really know what seventy floors up feels like until you’re standing on the inside, looking out. It was like I was in my own piece of workplace heaven. A bright cherry wood desk lay directly across from two thick leather chairs. There was also a sofa pushed up against the walls for what I assumed would be many over-nighters. The obligatory potted plant sat neatly trimmed in the corner, and tasteful, forgetful art hung on the walls. But none of that was anything compared to the view. I dropped the papers on the desk—my desk—and wandered to the window. The entire city stretched out below, twinkling and beeping faintly in the distance. The noisy grit and rush reduced to a pleasant background hum.