Corporate Training

Bright happy sunshine poured in through the leaded glass windows on the top floor of the Nikolaides Sales Group building, like lemonade made translucent. Only in Central Florida could Halloween look and feel so much like a summer day. Deb Zimbowski stood smiling like a jack-o-lantern at the head of the conference table. Rosalind Alday suppressed a shiver and wondered again how a woman whose job title included the word “human” could look so cheerful while discussing the end of someone’s career.

“It’s just a shame,” said Ira Ballistrea, not for the first time that hour. He was the District Manager whose sales numbers the Oldsmar office had bolstered, so he had plenty of reason to be disappointed. “An award winning team gone because somebody wanted a mall there. I still have their plaques up in my office.”

“You’ll just have to train up another award winning team.” Deb was clearly growing tired of the lament. “Rosalind do you have their paperwork ready?”

“Yes.” Four impressive careers reduced to manila folders. Rosalind held them against her chest as if it would protect them against the merciless out-processing procedure they were about to undergo. Deb held out one perfectly manicured hand to receive them. Now was the moment. Death was a part of the circle of life, kumbayah. Yet Rosalind didn’t move. Someone had done this to her father once, and while she hadn’t been there to see it, his face in the aftermath filled her inner vision and froze her to the spot. His heart had broken that day, and the fracture would never be mended. They had lost him within the year.

Deb’s pinstripe-thin eyebrows rose to meet her impeccably tended coif. “Are you going to give them to me anytime today?”

Heart pounding, Rosalind asked, “What if there were another way?”

“Excuse me?” Incredulous was not quite the word to describe the expression on Deb’s face. Gobsmacked might be a better term. Had anyone in the history of Nikolaides Sales Group ever questioned the word of Deb before? Probably not, if the dropped jaws around the table were anything to judge by.

In cartoons everybody had an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. For years now, Rosalind had a secretary hovering in her thoughts ready to stop her from the reckless decisions she had been inclined to make in her younger, more audacious days. Before Dad had gotten the pink slip. Today, and for the first time in a long while, the secretary was as speechless as the rest. So obviously now was the time to speak her mind, before everybody else remembered they had mouths.

“Oldsmar is an award winning sales group, right? So why do we need to lose this all-star team just because their office space is being bulldozed?”

“Yeah!” Ira almost knocked his coffee mug over in his haste to get out of his chair. “Let’s keep ’em!”

“And where are we to put them?” Deb was recovering rather quickly. Rosalind’s inner secretary was starting to tap urgently on her shoulder. “There is no office space available in Oldsmar and the rents are too costly in the next nearest town that does have space.”

“I say put ’em in the East Lakes office.” Ira had yet to sit back down. He grabbed his mug, which said #1 Grandpa on it, and took a dramatic swig.

“The East Lakes office is staffed to capacity.” This was Deb’s intern, a brown-suited young fellow whom most in the building only knew as Keough, because Deb was always barking the name over her shoulder as she stalked to the elevator. Keough! Bring me a grande skinny triple shot latte with whip! And a napkin!

“I say kick those East Lakes layabouts out on their keisters!” Ira made a gesture with his coffee mug that threatened the sanctity of his blue shirt cuffs. He was being uncharitable, but not by much. East Lakes had turned in a less than stellar performance that quarter. However, they were also unvested, unlike the higher performing Oldsmar group. In the never-ending battle to balance the sheets, unvested 401Ks beat out sales records.

“How is that fair to the East Lakes team?” Deb’s tone was sweet yet still frosty, like lemon sherbet. “Don’t they deserve a chance to become a winning team?”

Not only was this beside the point, Rosalind’s chance was rapidly escaping. The inner secretary was even starting to relax. So Rosalind tossed the manila folders to the conference table with a little more force than was strictly necessary. The resulting thump got everyone’s attention.

“We should make them telecommuters.”

The inner secretary fainted melodramatically, and good riddance because she was not going to be able to help with this situation anyway.

Silence reined about the table. Deb pursed her lips and glared. Ira looked confused. Keough seemed to be checking to make sure his ass was still intact and sitting in the office chair.

“I like it,” brayed a loud male voice suddenly from the Ooma situated at the center of the conference table. Everyone jumped. Of course they’d all known other people were in attendance by conference phone. However it was easy to forget they weren’t just corporate specters hovering nearby to collect data for reports, but were, in fact capable of interacting on the physical plane.

“But Mr. Nikolaides!” Deb went pale under her thirty dollar blush. “Do you understand what’s involved in getting people ready for telecommuting?”

“Of course I understand it, I’m talking to you on the damn VoIP phone aren’t I?”

Deb’s flush now threatened to render the expensive blush redundant, and Rosalind felt a twinge of sympathy, but only just a twinge. There was actually a good deal more involved in telecommuting than just using a VoIP phone, any HR agent who had ever been involved in setting up a new office knew that on principle. But Deb had made the mistake of condescending to the big boss and now she was going to have to eat it. And Rosalind wanted this chance. She wanted it so much she was practically shaking.

“Alday, you’re going to submit a proposal to me by the end of the day and it better be tight enough to float in a hurricane.”

“Yes Mr. Nikolaides.” The inner secretary was trying to get back on her metaphorical feet but she was weaving around like a drunken person.

“She’s going to need a hefty requisition from IT.” Deb was gathering her dignity back around her like Dracula’s cape. “And some guidance, I should think.”

“I’ll help.” Another voice emerged from the Ooma, this one young and male, a pleasingly warm baritone with an accent that almost sounded Broolynite. Only, Rosalind’s father had been a transplant from Brooklyn who had retained the accent, and this man’s vowels sounded more open than her father’s. This man’s voice was like the first cuff dropped at an all male revue: a tease.

“Fantastic. Nazario’s going to help her, you don’t need to worry about a thing Debra.” Mr. Nikolaides really did sound pleased about it. Deb was still looking mutinous but wisely held her tongue. Rosalind would do well to remember that she hadn’t gotten her position just by being a shark in heels. If she had reservations about the project they would need to be addressed.

But this was really going forward. Rosalind had just maybe saved four people’s careers. Holy shit, Rosalind was fully responsible for four people’s careers! The inner secretary was back in full command of her imaginary faculties and working herself up to a fit of the vapors.

“Rosalind, Alday right?” The warm, soothing baritone with the mysteriously familiar inflections wrapped itself around Rosalind’s frenetic thoughts like a velvet shawl. “Maybe you don’t remember me, but I’m the guy who set up your network IDs. Ash Nazario.”

She remembered him. He had given her the password allonsy, and when she’d recognized the reference, had struck up a semi-regular correspondence via IM and email. She wondered why on earth he’d think she wouldn’t remember a guy who’d once given her a recipe for butterbeer, but maybe he didn’t realize she had actually tried to make it. Somehow, on the odd occasion that she would try to imagine what he might be like in real life, she had not imagined that he would be in possession of a voice that could melt the Fortress of Solitude. “Yeah, yes, of course I remember you.” Atta girl, way to impress him with your pithy wit.

“Okay great.” If there hadn’t been a smile in the voice before, there was now.

“Let’s meet in the coffee shop on the ground floor and we’ll talk about what your team will need in order to make this happen.”

“Yes. Let’s.” Let’s end a sentence on a contraction and really drive home that impression of a mind filled with clarity. The metaphorical secretary pushed her glasses up her imaginary nose and mouthed, serves you right.

The bottom floor of the Nikolaides Sales Group building rented out space to an Indigo Coffee shop, and everybody benefited. The boss got rent, a local coffee outfit got a dedicated customer base, the employees stayed caffeinated, and it was just a big win all around to Ash’s mind. He stepped up to the curved counter and ordered his usual, a grande Café Con Leche. He was a little more anxious than he would ever care to admit, but he was really looking forward to meeting the woman who made his job less of a drudge on a weekly basis. She probably had no idea that he’d asked for her specifically on numerous occasions when he needed to work with somebody from HR. She was the only person outside of IT who consistently got his jokes. Ash collected his coffee and then took a stool and watched the door

The next person to walk in was a corporate cutie, wearing light grey linen and a bobbed haircut that seemed to be trying to escape the confines of its own bobbedness, with one side curling in the opposite direction of the other in defiance of bob conventions. This couldn’t be his girl. Could it? Nothing against corporate cuties, but she didn’t look like she’d know a sonic screwdriver from a lightsaber.

She marched up to the counter and reached inside her sensible cross-body bag (faux leather no doubt) and pulled out a wallet embossed with the unmistakable flying W logo of Wonder Woman.

“Raspberry soda please. The biggest one you have.”

“It’s a twenty ounce.”

“Yeah, sure, gimme.”

Okay there was now compelling circumstantial evidence that maybe this was his girl. He appraised her more closely and saw the closet geek touches that would not be visible to the unsuspecting rube. There was, of course, that superfabulous wallet. Even more geeksome was the keychain in the shape of a sonic screwdriver dangling off the O ring of her purse. So maybe she did know a sonic screwdriver from a lightsaber. There was only one way to be absolutely sure. Ash pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number he’d gotten from the office directory. Murray Gold’s unmistakable composition began playing from the depths of mystery girl’s purse. She pulled out the phone, tapped send, and said, “Hello?”

“Hello,” Ash said, “I’m the Doctor.”

At that, Rosalind Alday turned and fixed upon Ash the biggest pair of brown eyes he had ever seen. She smiled and obligingly asked, “Doctor who?”