Guilty.
Me
They only liked bottled water from the titties of Antarctic icebergs. I had no chance.
Sam
Maci says that’s not a thing.
Giggling as a picture of my one-year-old goddaughter’s scowl fills the screen, I set my phone on the counter. There’s no drainage hole in the bottom of the pot, but since I’ll be gone all weekend, it’ll probably need the extra water. I run the faucet overthe silvery orchid roots until water flows down the sides, spilling some on the herringbone hardwood. Grumbling, I set the pot on the windowsill above the sink, wipe up the spill, and shift into decompression mode.
Tabletop fountain.Vanilla wax warmer.Light over the stove.
I grab my camera bag from the couch and stick it in the small bedroom turned editing studio at the front of my house, then slip back through the kitchen and down the hallway to my room.
Stretchy pants.Hair off my neck.Yoga mat.
Retracing my steps back to the kitchen, I cue up my version of a mindfulness playlist on the record player, breathing out the stress as soft R&B eases through the wireless speaker. It’s fascinating, really—the invisible force of sound. How something so innocuous has the power to soothe or torment. Enhance or defile. Establish or ruin. It’s astonishing.
With the flip of a switch, the gas fireplace ticks to life—the last step in my routine. I settle on my mat on the living room hardwood and take a cleansing breath. My eyes fall closed. I’m finally at peace.My therapist might just be right.
CHAPTER TWO
TREVOR
“So, hypothetically, if I didn’t save my field report for the week, how bad would that be?” Caleb—one of several new associates on my sales team—leans over the metal chair in front of my desk, squinting at the glare from the window as he fidgets with his cell phone.
Frustration puffs through my lips, and I turn to close the blinds behind me to hide it. “Depending on how hypothetical we’re talking, pretty bad, Caleb. Did you check your drafts?” I try to keep the edge out of my voice, but there’s been something with him every week for the last month.
“Yeah…” He checks his buzzing phone.“But, uhh”—he taps the screen—“I forgot to”—he fucking laughs—“uh, forgot to use…” When he finally looks up at the exasperation on my face, he slides his phone in his pocket with a nervous grin. “Sorry. I forgot to use the new form in SalesUp, so it didn’t autosave.”
SalesUp is our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. Our bread and butter for data organization. We’ve made Fridays in-office days to keep our team up to date with all our contracts each week. But it’s hard to do that when Caleb refuses to use the damn tools he’s been trained on.
“Which form did you use?” He better not say thesample template again, or I’m sticking him on mail duty for the foreseeable future.
With a grimace, Caleb shifts on his feet, tossing his black hair out of his eyes. “…The blank sample template.”
Sighing, I hang my head.Of course he did. Why use a pre-populated form that autosaves to the company server every thirty seconds? What sense doesthatmake? Nope, let’s manually enter every-damn-thing into a sample template. “The whole reason we created the new forms was to make it easy for you to avoid mistakes like this.”
“There’s no way to recover it? Like, from the cloud or something?”
All I can do is blink at him. How he thinks I can pull an unsaved form out of thin air is some kind of logic I can’t get behind. But Big, Angry Black Man is a label I’ve worked hard to avoid in my HR file, so I stifle my annoyance. “…Did you save it to the cloud, Caleb?”
“Uh, no.”
“Then no.” I turn to my double monitor and open his field file, only to be smacked in the face with another problem. “Where are the rest of your daily reports? I’m only seeing the clients from Monday and Tuesday.” It’s Friday. If he tells me he didn’t make any progress after I met him on the job this week, I might lose it.
“So…how bad would it be if I forg?—”
“Never mind.” Leaning back in my leather office chair, I lace my hands behind my neck, squinting against the pounding in my head. Our department secures contracts for EdTechU’s virtual whiteboard planning systems with universities and school districts in the Bay Area. Building professional relationships by workshopping directly with administrators, teachers, and students through the life of the contract put EdTechU on the map.
Organization on our part is vital, which is why my comanager and I have streamlined everything for our associates, fine-tuning the basic corporate CRM to fit our needs. EdTechU has always encouraged its employees to adjust the given tools tomatch the learning styles on our teams. With this new cohort being so green, we made the entire reporting process as easy as click, drop, submit.At least,I thought we did. But clearly, we needed to add in some digital hand-holding on top of traveling across the area to provide them with on-site support during the week. I tap over to my managerial view in SalesUp, find his Field Reports folder, and bring up the correct recording form on my second monitor. “How many contacts did you make this week?”
“Uh, twelve…or twenty-one. Eleven?”
My hand settles over my mouth to hide the tension setting into my jaw while watching him try to recall a week’s worth of information. The weight of his mistake seems to sink into lines on his forehead, and the more we talk, the more his shoulders slump. I’m not trying to be hard on him, but he’s got to step it up before performance reviews. “Hey?—”
“It was…twelve. It was twelve.”
