We can offer a $7K monthly retainer.
Best,
Jude
Jude,
$7K, laptop, and desk chair.
-Veronica
Veronica,
$7K, laptop. Final offer.
Best,
Jude
Jude,
No desk chair, no deal.
-Veronica
Veronica,
What is the significance of the desk chair?
Best,
Jude
Chapter Four
Jude
Ineed to get up and walk around after this bewildering rapid-fire exchange with Veronica. Are negotiations always like this? I could punt this over to Helen, our single HR manager, but knowing how swamped she is, the potential deal with Veronica could be drawn out over weeks, and I’m becoming more and more anxious to wrap this up and move on.
Jogging downstairs, I pass the mailman, Larry, in the lobby as he’s carefully delivering the mail into each of the fifty-six boxes for the building. I glance down at my wrist: It’s 2:00 p.m. on the dot. I wave at him, shaking my head with a laugh. “Larry, I could set a clock by you.”
“That’s the goal,” he says, grinning.
Across the street, I order an iced Americano at the neighborhood coffee shop, and as I’m stepping back into the lobby, my phone pings with a new email.
It’s from Veronica, and it’s so long that curiosity gets the better of me and I stop mid-step in the lobby to read.
Jude,
The significance of the desk chair is that mine died of natural causes a few days ago and I just had to carry its lifeless body down to the dumpster. Normally, I could weather this loss, you see, but my refrigerator also recently bit the dust, my laptop is toast, and I suspect my severance check is still making its way through the approval process of seven management levels and two spirit realms. I’m not going to be very useful as a consultant if I can’t look at slides, charts, and proposals on a screen that doesn’t have a giant green stripe across the entire middle, and I’m not comfortable working on the couch like a GenZ goblin, shaped like a shrimp while typing out *emotional damage* in lower case. I suppose I could ask for a standing desk, because that would serve the same purpose, but I like to sit to work because it means I can get up and pace to think. I’m asking for a desk chair because I have nothing to lose.
I realize this is a strange thing to hold the line on and that this email is a lot, but I’ve had too much caffeine because I slept like crap, and I think I’m just generally over giving in to anyone else’s demands, no matter how small. So, take it or leave it.
-Veronica
I read the email again and swipe my free hand over my mouth, stifling a laugh. She’s funny, of course, but there’ssomething vulnerable beneath the salty stubbornness, and I like the playfully unhinged vibe I get reading this. It speaks to the weariness and bubbling hysteria just beneath my own calm exterior.
Smiling, I reply to her email.
