On A Claire Day...

She needs the Executive Meeting Room, she needs the overhead, she needs remote access, the easel, and a carafe of Kona coffee (not Columbian) and she needs it all at 9:00. This morning.

God, lack of planning chaps my hide.

I tell Claire she can either have it after 9:30 or she can have a different room, as that particular room is booked until then by our COO, Sam. At first, she sniffs at the insinuation that anyone is more important than Herself, but finally gives in, mainly because I’m not motivated enough to care either way. If she wants the big room at 9:00, she can wheedle Sam himself for it.

Claire: “Okay, 9:30’s fine. Have Shane set everything up”
Me: “Shane is out of the office today, Claire.”
Claire: “What? What do you mean?”
Me: “He sent out that email yesterday, reminding everyone he’d be out today so that he could handle requests ahead of time.”
Claire: “Oh, well then I need you to take care of it for me.”

Ah, yes, sloppy seconds.

Sloppy seconds for something I haven’t the slightest interest in doing, or, truthfully, the skill. The overhead is a tricky little poozer, and I inevitably set it up wrong. See, Claire, I have this thing called a “job”. My “job” is to answer a crazy machine called a “telephone”, which allows you to receive those all-important calls from your manicurist, your divorce lawyer and other personal service personnel. If I’m away from my desk, you might not receive notice that your hair appointment has been rescheduled.

Yeah, I know. Piss, moan, whine. Whatever.

However, because Shane is out of the office, I do have to do it. True, it’s not my job per se, that is, it wouldn’t appear in an official job description. However, an unofficial job description would read “Relentlessly Wiping Corporate Ass” and, alas, “Accommodating Last Minute Bullshit Requests” is a subcategory thereof. Damn. Suddenly I’m a coffee jerk.

It turns out only one other individual will be in attendance (in a room designed to hold 40. Of course.) Coffee? Brewed and delivered. Easel? Arranged. Overhead? Set up (after much cursing). Remote access? Ready to go. The client arrives, is ushered graciously into our swanky meeting room, doors glide shut and I go back to quietly surfing the web.

Until I hear a grunt, a slam, and then my name, muffled.

Entering the meeting room, I look to where the client is staring, bug-eyed, only to see Claire bent into a closet, her hand grasping a bottle of water. She is trying to pull it from the case at the bottom of the stack, and, as the laws of physics would demand, the stack has fallen over onto her, pinning her to the closet door. Well, duh.

Claire. Ass-up. In a client meeting. It's Christmas come early.

Walking over, I right the stack and place a bottle from the top of the stack down below to steady it. Finally uprighted, a red-faced Claire states, preemptively, “I wanted THIS one.”

Well, then. You got it.