The attack, unexpected and splattered with bile, rattled the fabric-wrapped cubicle walls and caused several sales calls to be muted mid-pitch, lest a potential buyer overhear the calamity taking place by the copier.
A slamming door preceded the whole ordeal, and somewhere around the corner, down by the vending machine, Mary Beth had a feeling something was about to go terribly wrong.
When the VP of one thing or another emerged from his office, one of of six along the eastern wall, one of six seats in the office maze that received a taste of sunlight during the working hours, his face was an alarming shade of red. Before he stepped through the threshold, buttoned collar tight around the pulsing veins in his neck, he spotted his subordinate prey. Some errant miscalculation, a malignant spreadsheet cell that had gone untraced for too long, the culprit as clear as day. Each report tagged, a target.
She was printing his schedule as a courtesy.
“Ten fucking weeks, Cheryl? As if a comma is so god damn hard. The formula. The formula. The fucking formula, Cheryl. Why do we spend money on training if the work is dogshit?”
He threw a stack of papers on the ground and took a furious stride forward, wrenching his fist around the doorknob and yanking the slab of particle board closed behind him. The entire structure shook, the executives’ rooms partitioned only by a false wall that stopped two feet shy of the ceiling, bolted together on the same aluminum frames that enclosed their underlings. Cheryl was defensive at first. Terse, even.
“Roger, as far as I know, nothing’s been flagged or rejected. We can take a look, if you like, but you know I’m only tier two. We have quality audit for a reason.”
She scooped the schedule from the printer tray and dropped it nonchalantly in the trash. The rustling in the plastic bin, bagless, filled with scraps and loose staples, punctuated the moment of tension. Roger’s blood boiled, and he screamed.
“If you think for a single second you can pass this off. If you think you can heave this godforsaken anchor around my neck or anyone else’s. You’re fucking finished. We’re all finished. You… Have fucking ruined me!”
Roger smashed his fist against the copier and winced. Cheryl’s heart pounded as she knelt and gathered the documents in question. She gave them a single glance and gasped, her error glaring, almost hilarious.
A few of the other doors opened to investigate the commotion, and scattered around the third floor, the growing chatter was anything but outgoing calls. Cheryl shuffled through the sheets of paper while Roger paced, fuming, pumping his fingertips into his palms.
Suddenly, he panicked and dashed back into his enclosure. The employees hovering around the copier overheard groans of desperation, the erratic buzz of the portable shredder. A few tense moments later, Roger reemerged, angry as ever.
Cheryl dropped the documents and backed toward a table designated for collating, hands clasped at the base of her spine, bumping over a stack of outbound mail as her hips hit the edge. The surface, wrapped in offwhite contact paper that presented itself as paint, shook with inadvertant collision, wobbling on shoddy legs in a way that mirrored the nervous weakness in Cheryl’s knees.
As Roger’s faced contorted, air careening through his teeth in a sharp inhale that would fuel the next tirade, Cheryl’s terror doubled back upon itself, a feedback loop that oscillated at fever pitch for a several cacophonous seconds. Then, as if regulated by the implicit laws of physics, it broke, leaving her serene in the trajectory of his seething.
The man prepared his onslaught, practiced over a lifetime of subconscious misogyny.
“This is exactly what happens when you leave such matters to chance, or worse, some idiot from the typing pool. You, Cheryl… Mrs. Blantz if we must be formal, or is it miss? I present each and every one of you with a simple task, the chance to be a brick in the castle that protects us all.”
Cheryl straightened her back and brought her hands to her abdomen. She took a step forward, into Roger’s space. He bellowed.
“Brick by god damned brick, all I ask for is accuracy. Do you even understand what you’ve done?”
Cheryl stood firm, impervious. The temperature of the room seemed to change, the heat from Roger’s brow dissipating in a moment of faux-composure. He realized his folly, briefly, and the professional sucide it represented. Somewhere in his mind, a new tactic took shape.
The facsimile smile sliced across his face. He straightened his back and enlarged his body language. Pulling from a career of managerial coercion, he passed the buck masterfully, and zeroed in on Cheryl’s alleged damage to the company.
“I know mistakes can happen. I know you mean well. But this one, this one’s a little too big to let slide. I’m not trying to be the bad guy here, but it’s going to take a lot to make this right. This affects all of us.”
Roger smoothed his tie and attempted to look casual, residual rage still twisting his face, showing itself in tiny tremors along his jawline. No one else in the office dared to speak. Paused in suffocating silence of the faceoff, most of the staff could sense a subtle shift in the power dynamic. Cheryl smiled, but said nothing.
The third floor held its collective breath. People from every department had emerged from their desks, gathering near the wall of executive suites to bear witness. Overhead, the flourescents hummed, bathing the bystanders in unflattering light. Roger moved first, shrinking.
He took a step back, any semblance of strategy abandoned. The culmination of casual misconduct and unfettered greed, a decade of cooking books and covering tracks, came bubbling to the surface. Well beyond his control, he blubbered.
“Look, we have to roll this back somehow. I’m sorry for shouting, but you pushed me past the brink. This is big enough to sink the whole ship. For fuck’s sake, Cheryl, I could go to prison. At the very least, I’ll lose the house…”
He stammered, the words fumbling from his mouth further eroding the ediface of confidence.
“This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. I worked it all out. You bitch, this is all your fault.”
His anger flared in another schizophrenic pivot, but subsided as quickly. Tears formed in the corners or Roger’s eyes, and he turned away to hide his shame. In that instant, Cheryl saw right through him. The man that had been vaguely abusive since her first day, demanding and condescending at every turn, was little more than a frightened boy. For a fleeting moment, she pitied him. Down by the vending machine, Mary Beth remained at her desk, waiting patiently on hold with the SEC.
The VP dropped to his knees, beginning to accept the depth of his defeat. Cheryl took three steps forward and placed a hand on his shuddering shoulder.
“Roger, you’re not the victim. You’re the villain, and you always have been.”
She turned away from her boss groveling on the blue-grey carpet, striding past the copier with a slight swagger in her step. She looked over her shoulder and spoke loud enough for the whole office to hear.
“I’d like to tender my resignation, effective immediately.”