Voluntary 10 [7]
Thoughts
Click click click. She turned her head to her right. Click click click. She turned it to the left. That’s all she could hear. Click click click. All of her coworkers were busy, doing whatever it is that they all did after returning from lunch. She leaned back on her chair and stretched herself. Sometimes she wondered if they were actually working or chatting away with someone. Was it on a fun social network or a job-seeking one? Were they being productive or not? She did get reports on problem employees if they tried to access the wrong places on the Internet, but how could she trust that whatever filters the network administrators had set up would actually catch everyone in breach of the rules? She never felt convinced that the tools that they used could properly identify all of the offending web traffic. She sighed, then shook her head and stared at her monitor’s screen. An empty spreadsheet.
“Lola,” she said aloud without thinking. “You were supposed to send me the new payroll format, not a blank spreadsheet,” she continued while shaking her head. Then she took a deep breath and started to gnaw on her fingertips.
“Those perfectly fine fingers have nothing to do with Dolores’ most recent goof,” said a svelte, short-haired woman as she approached Jessica, who paused as she realized she had been found out by her co-worker. Slowly, with the tips of the index and middle fingers of her left hand trapped between her front teeth, Jessica parted her lips and slowly moved the fingers away from her face. She took one of those moist, anti-bacterial cleaning wipes and used it to wipe her hands with it.
“Oh, Sonya,” Jessica said. “You always catch me at the most inopportune times!” she exclaimed.
“Maybe it’s just that this is how you act all the time, don’t you think?”
“You’re probably right,” Jessica said while shrugging. “Oscar does tell me that I need to quit this habit. So, what can I help you with?” she asked Sonya.
“Right. Richard, one of the assistant managers from the Mountain View branch needs help because our new insurance provider isn’t reimbursing some treatment that our previous provider had promised to reimburse,” Sonya said.
“I thought we told everyone to try to not schedule any new treatments during the transition,” Jessica replied.
“His response to that is that it was a procedure that they couldn’t wait any longer for and that it’s not his fault that we changed providers out of the blue. He had scheduled it 2 months ago and we gave them a 3-week notice on this change,” Sonya added. Jessica threw up her arms in the air.
“I’m not a fan of corporate today,” Jessica said and chuckled lightly. “Alright, I’ll get in touch with him to get more information about this.”
“What about your schedule though?” Sonya asked in a playful tone.
“Yeah well, we haven’t run into an insurance provider who doesn’t treat births yet. Who knows though? We seem to always end up with the most discerning providers as far as exceptions,” Jessica said and then stored some documents that were set atop her desk in its top drawer, then closed it with a key. She then groaned as she tightly clutched her chair while standing up. Sonya rushed to help her.
“Hey, are you sure you should still be at the office? I mean if I were you, I’d be charging rent to whoever’s in there or some renovation charges at the very least.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not due for a few more weeks. I don’t want to risk spending too much of my maternity leave at the office,” Jessica remarked. “And I need to do something that nobody can do in my stead.”
Jessica smiled at Sonya as she dragged her feet across the carpet, doing her best to keep a proud stance while silently cursing the weight of the child in her abdomen. I really want to meet you my sweetie, but it’s been very difficult for mommy, you know? she thought to herself. It’s so frustrating! Why do all these people do the bare minimum to get by? It feels as if I do much more work than necessary around here.
She followed a long corridor, arriving at a heavy door with a push bar. Crack!
“Darn static!” she groaned as she pushed on the bar and opened the door. The floor on the other side didn’t have the carpet, and she followed past a door with the typical Men sign and then finally arrived at the Women's sign. The bathroom at last! She pushed against the door to open it and then went into one of the unoccupied stalls. She sat on the toilet seat, pressed her elbows against her thighs, and cupped her forehead as she lowered her head. She gritted her teeth and took a deep breath. “Not the best place to do that,” she said aloud as she shook her head.
What if I quit? Could we make ends meet? I want to take care of him when he’s born, but what will others think? Choosing motherhood is frowned upon, isn’t it? Liz was an executive before she quit to take care of her daughter and hasn’t been able to find a similar job again after 5 years.
She stood up, the toilet’s sensor causing it to flush automatically as she did so. She wiped after some effort and dressed again. She opened the door to the stall, arrived at the large mirror and sink, and started to wash her hands. She looked around her as she did. Bare pipes, badly set cement, partially painted walls. I get it. It’s the employee bathroom, but they could finish it sometime; it may improve our mood. How many times had she requested the budget for such improvements? She shook her head, splashed water unto her face, and went out of the bathroom and back into the carpeted space.
