A literary magazine with a sense of humor
New Bossby I am an administrative assistant at a real estate company. I am the fourth administrative assistant this year. I do not know exactly why the other three quit, but I can guess. I think it was because of my boss. It is 10 AM and my boss just walked into the office. She is wearing a long black coat with a large feathered collar. It is very cold outside but her coat is wide open. She never closes her coat because she can't: it is two sizes too small for her. She is wearing brown sunglasses which she has trouble removing due to her overly long nails. She has trouble doing many things due to her overly long nails. Sometimes, instead of handing her a piece of paper, I will place it on a table so I can watch her pick it up. Her sweater is low cut and bright pink. But it isn't merely pink. It's also orange and purple and navy blue and maroon. It is textured so as to be bumpy. Very bumpy. When she walks towards me, the sweater occupies my field of vision. It enlarges and surrounds me; it becomes impossible to look anywhere but directly at the sweater. Her lipstick is bright pink, so as to match the sweater. She has lipstick on her teeth. She drops off her purse and immediately goes outside for a cigarette break. The cigarette break lasts 20 minutes. After the break she hands me a stack of folders. In the folders are lease renewal letters for our tenants. Every letter has its own yellow post-it reminding me to "mail the letter." As though I might forget. As though I understand neither the postal system nor the point of written correspondence. She also hands me a hand-written note. "Please type this for me." Sometimes I think that she is inventing work for me to do. I am pretty sure that my boss does nothing all day. Sometimes I'll transfer a call to her and it will ring and ring, even though I know that she's sitting in her office, doing nothing, the phone a mere inches from her hand. I send out the renewal letters. I type the note and bring it to her office in the far corner of the building. Her office has one bar-covered window that looks out onto a parking lot. She has a small radio on her desk that is playing two radio stations simultaneously. The noise is terrible. I hand her the note while thinking, "My God, woman. Your radio is simultaneously playing two stations and you are doing nothing to adjust the tuning. Pull yourself together." She looks at the note. She squints her eyes while reading it and begins to slowly shake her head "no". She looks at me, squinting and frowning, as though I have really let her down. "I wanted you to file this. Not type it." She leaves at 3 PM most days. Her typical excuse is that she has a doctor's appointment. I do not know her medical situation, but do I know cancer patients who have fewer doctor's appointments. I think she simply sees no point in coming up with more creative excuses for working only 5 hours a day. I pray that she will be fired. That by some miracle the owner of the company will notice her ineptitude and fire her and give me her office and her job and her title of Property Manager. I pray for this every day. I pray for it until the day she is fired and I am given her job and her office and her title. It is the best day. I now have my own administrative assistant, a man named Tyrone. He wears mustard-yellow suits and smiles brightly when he sees me. He is very energetic and efficient. He has a cubicle in the middle of the office, where everyone can see him. It is my job to keep him busy. I call Tyrone into my office. I give him files to copy, letters to type, notes to file. He's done in a hour. The owner of the company stops by my office, "It looks like Tyrone has nothing to do. Maybe you could give him some work?" I nod. There is no more work. There is only enough work for one of us. I call Tyrone into my office. I give him all of the work I have to do for the week. I ask him to close the door as he leaves. I turn on my radio. It is playing two stations at once. I cannot coax the radio in my office to play only one station, no matter where I position the radio, no matter how precisely I turn the dial. I would rather listen to two radio stations at once than the crushing silence. My phone rings. I do not answer. I am going to leave early today. I may say I have a doctor's appointment. I may give no reason at all. I imagine how my old boss spent all of her days in this office. I guess that it was the same way I do, head down on the desk, her cheek pressed against the wide, cool wood. I stare out of the barred window, waiting to be discovered. |
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