Peter had already gone for his morning jog when I entered the kitchen the next morning. Gazing around, I let out a sigh that it was still intact and without a mess. No burning smell or wet floor. For thirty minutes, I enjoyed the quiet morning by myself, listening to the birds chirping on the maple trees outside and drinking coffee. Peter returned while I was in the shower and was still in his room when I headed out for work.
In the office, Rowena seemed to be in a good mood. She threw a thin smile as I bumped into her in the hallway. That had never happened before because she’d always looked straight ahead while rushing to wherever she was going in a hurry.
Around ten, Val Tanaka emailed to announce that the White Water’s team would be in our office on Friday, only three days away. The founder’s son might join the team, so she expected us to clean our workstations to make a good impression for the British team.
I groaned because I had tons of other things to do, and the cleaning process was a “must.”
After lunch, Desiree instructed us to start cleaning our cubicles, especially the refund clerks who received a lot of faxes from clients. She ordered them to put the stacks of papers in boxes and store them underneath their desks.
Even Rowena cleaned her office. Lena nudged at my elbow when she piled her papers neatly on the credenza by the wall right next to her desk.
During our cleaning time, Val visited our department. Her angular eyes sparkled while thanking us for our cooperation. Desiree’s face beamed at the praise. If I had been in her shoes, I would have been happy to get the recognition too. But since I’d had a conversation with Lena about how Desiree managed Myriad Beverage, my eyes were open about her caring more about her reputation in front of Val than actual performance or taking care of her staff. She wanted people to think her department was tight-knit and high performing but put most of her effort into creating the illusion rather than making it a better department. If she’d cared more about her staff than her image, she could have been a good leader.
Lena and I took piles of used papers to the shredding room and passed Valerie and Lisa coming back from downstairs. Valerie nodded and smiled at us as we carried the big piles of papers, but Lisa didn’t make any eye contact with us. Many people said Lisa was a snob, but no one would dare irritate her because Valerie was her friend. In some ways, Lisa and Rowena were in the same position—their bosses were also their friends—but I’d heard Lisa treated her staff nicely.
I wished we could use less paper, but Rowena had requested the supporting documents for all accounts to be saved as an electronic copy and unfortunately, to put the documents into one file for each account, there was no other way but printing, putting them in order, and scanning them. So if one account had three documents, one hundred accounts would need at least three hundred papers to create the backups.
I’d already suggested we use the scanned documents already in the system. The supporting documents for each account wouldn’t be in one file but one folder. But Rowena, as usual, always thought her way was the best. I should have known better before giving her the suggestion.
“I heard the founder’s son is still in his forties and handsome too,” said Lena as we entered the shredding room.
“How do you know?” I asked, letting her shred her papers first.
“From Theresa,” Lena said, picking up some papers and feeding them into the shredding machine. Theresa was Val’s executive assistant and Lena’s neighbor. The shredder was humming as it ate up Lena’s papers quickly.
“For my aunt, Richard Gere is hot and handsome too,” I said, chuckling.
Lena grinned widely. “Well, that’s possible. So we’ll see this Friday,” she said. “If this guy is as hot as they said, it will be worth it to see.”
I laughed.
“Hey, how’s your roommate? Is he good?” asked Lena, brushing paper debris from her hands as she moved aside to let me use the machine.
“He is a good person, and last night was our first time having dinner together. And it was fun!” I said, feeding my papers into the machine. “But he is a jinx for my kitchen.”
“What do you mean?” Lena asked, leaning on the lower cabinet with her arms folded in front of her chest.
I told her about the blender and the eggs.
“Oh, my God. He reminds me of my sixteen-year-old nephew who doesn’t know anything about the kitchen because my sister spoils him,” Lena said. “Your roommate must be a momma’s boy then.”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“He should have asked you if he didn’t know what he was doing. But maybe his pride forbids him. You know how guys like to act tough and seem like they know everything,” Lena said.
“True,” I said. “OK, I’m done with shredding. Wanna go for lunch?”
Lena nodded and pushed her body away from the cabinet. “Let’s go. I’m hungry from all that cleaning,” she said as we headed back to our cubicles.