You know how they say “Something always happens when you’re not at work”? Well, that’s never the case at STD. Nobody ever really notices that I’m not there. I guess that says a little something about my daily contribution and importance to the company. I bet nobody will ask me about my court appearance, and I don’t want them to. I want to remove that day from memory. It’s not every day you get completely shamed on national television. Luckily I’ll have a few weeks before that episode airs. At least I was justifiably excused from work because it was court. And I don’t have to hide from my manager or remember a fake illness like I do when I call out.
I didn’t come in early because I didn’t sleep well. But I wasn’t that late either, like I used to be, only about twenty minutes or so. I walk into the office and no one is sitting in their cubicles. I’m confused, because I walked pass a row of cars in the parking lot. Maybe there’s a company-wide meeting? They never have them this early; I’ve been keeping pretty good track of all meetings and appointments lately. But since I was out yesterday, there’s a possibility I could’ve missed something. I hope the company didn’t go under. I miss one day, and we fold. I guess I am important after all.
I walk over to the meeting room and no one is there. I see Barbara walking back from the ladies room. “Where is everybody?” I ask.
“The cafeteria,” she says, as she scurries away so fast that I can’t even ask a follow-up question. You would think someone told her Christian Slater is waiting for her to rub baby oil on his body. Is there a special breakfast? Maybe it’s the building’s anniversary. Those are always fun. I try to keep up with her as she rushes back to the cafeteria, where the doors are shut. She jumps in the room, and the doors shut behind her. There’s a table outside of the cafeteria, where a man and woman sit. Neither of them works here. There’s a larger man guarding the door, wearing a security-guard uniform, but he’s not our normal husky security guard with the fluorescent Crocs.
I walk over to the desk, and the man hands me a booklet and a Scantron answer sheet, with the little circles to shade, for a test. “Can I see your ID badge?” he says. I stare at him.
“Do you have a number-two pencil?” the woman sitting next to him says, as she holds out a box full of freshly sharpened pencils.
“Ummm, no. Why is everyone in the cafeteria?” I ask her. I try to peek inside the cafeteria, but the large man blocks me. Then he shakes his head.
“Today we have testing,” the seated woman says.
“Testing for what?”
“I apologize, but any further questions I’m not at liberty to answer,” she says.
I take my testing materials and walk into the room. All of the STD employees are lined up at the tables, working feverishly at their standardized tests, while men and women pace back and forth watching them. Everyone is in here, from the higher-ups to the lowest of lows. Part of me thought they were joking, and I had to see this with my own eyes.
A woman walks over to me. “I see an open seat down there.” She points to assure I know the direction she means.
I walk down the aisle and see Frank. “What’s going on?” I say to him. He has a scared look in his eye, like a runaway slave.
“They’re trying to see if we’re smart enough to do our jobs,” Frank says reluctantly. “They made us walk right in here as soon as we came in the building.” The same woman who directed me to my seat hits Frank on the hand with a ruler.
“No talking,” she says.
“Fuck this bullshit,” I say. “I’m a talk to Floyd, he can’t do this.” As Frank is about to reply, she hits him again.
I storm out of the cafeteria to the table outside of the door. “I’m not taking any test.” I drop the booklet and Scantron on the table. “I came in to work, not take tests. I don’t play games. I quit school ’cuz of recess.”
As I walk away, the seated woman says, “You’re making a huge mistake.”
I barge into Floyd’s office, even more upset than when I got passed over for the promotion. But I really, really, really don’t like tests. I don’t know how I can stress that enough. When I graduated college, I was so happy to know I’d never have to take another test again that I got a little glassy eyed. Tests would make me stay up all night, and I couldn’t eat, and even would throw up from time to time. Floyd sits with his chair facing the window, so I can only see his back.
“What’s with this bullshit? Fucking test taking? I’m not into this SAT crap. Who put you up to this? I know it can’t be your idea. Can you hear me?”
Floyd’s chair turns around, but it’s not him sitting in it. It’s a man in his mid-fifties with short gray hair, wearing a dark suit and a bolo tie. He looks more like a friend of Colonel Sanders than an executive. “Please refrain from using profanity when you’re around me, young man. Do you work here?” he says with a Southern accent.
“Yes, I do work here. But wait, who are you? Where’s Floyd?”
The man grins. “My name is Hunter Clemons. And Floyd will not be around for the foreseeable future.”
What is he talking about? “Did you kill him?” I say as I look in the closet.
He laughs. “No, but he is no longer an employee of Schuster, Thompkins, and Dykes. What you should be concerned with is me being your new boss. I must say, you’re not making a good first impression.” He gets up and extends his hand to me. I opt to take a seat, as opposed to shaking it. The feeling of shock conquers my manners. “Were you not here yesterday when the memo went out?”
“No, I was out.”
“Unexcused absences . . . trying to make a horrible first impression?”
“I had a court date.”
“And a criminal as well. Fantastic.” He takes a small black Moleskine notebook out of his suit-jacket pocket and writes down something. “When you rudely made your uninvited entrance into my office, I think I heard you mention your distaste for the testing I’ve implemented. Care to tell me why?”
How can they fire Floyd like that? Now, I have to sit here and answer to this douche bag.
“Is that so?” he says.
“Why do we have to take a test?”
“Let’s just say, I want to make sure everyone is doing a job that suits their strengths. Do we have any redundancies in roles? Who will be right for certain promotions? Those are the sort of things I hope to figure out with the test. It’s a standard way of running businesses in other countries.”
“Promotions?”
He seems alarmed this is the only word that caught my attention. “Yes, especially promotions,” he replies.
“Me and Floyd had an agreement that I’d get the next manager opening.”
He shakes his head and rubs his palms. “Please accept my sincerest apologies, but I was not privy to any prior agreements you had with previous management. If you do meet the qualifying standards, you’ll get the promotion. I believe it’s that simple.”
“But I was planning on it. I need this promotion. What me and Floyd had was like a verbal contract. You have to honor it,” I say.
“I don’t have to do anything. Because I make the decisions, and you do not,” he says.
“Oh really? I’ll see what my union might have to say about that,” I say.
This really strikes a chord with him. He sits down. “You don’t have a union.”
Okay, I guess I have to read our employee homepage a little more often to stay abreast of what benefits we have now.
“You never had a union,” he continues.
Or benefits we’ve ever had. “I see this is a battle I will not win. I’m gonna get out your hair right now.”
“Please do.”
“We’ll talk about this later.”
“No need. My stance will remain the same later as well.”
“It’s not like I don’t have options,” I say.
“What are you going to do? Get another job?” he says, laughing.
He’s right. I have no choice. I walk out of the room and go back to the testing area. The man sitting at the table outside of the testing room has a shit-eating grin on his face as soon as he sees me. “Hey, Tough Tony is back,” he says.
I hold out my hand for the testing materials. “Had a change of heart, I see,” the seated woman says.
“Give me the fucking test.” Then, I walk into the room as they both crack up.
I can’t even sleep tonight. My whole plan of proving I was a great employee got flushed down the toilet in one fell swoop. I’m already not that good at my job. Okay, I’ll be honest, I suck at my job. But this test is definitely gonna prove it. I’ll never get this promotion, and they might even fire me. And I’m already dodging bill-collector calls, and my mortgage is late. There’s only one thing to do. I pick up the phone and call Jake.
“Okay, I’m in,” I say.
“In what?”
“The plan. To get the promotion, but I’m doing it my way.”
“Whatever, it’s late. Unless you have some hoes with you right now. Which I know you don’t. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
I hang up the phone. I don’t know, but already I feel like I’m going to get more sleep. I feel good about myself. I think tomorrow is gonna hold a whole new journey. I’m going to get things done, but my way. And I already have a few things in mind to get rid of Chloe. I’ll give her till the end of the week.