Unfurling

Confrontation by Paige

Sitting at her desk, Paige is reading through all of the email from IT. She is pulling out the pertinent information to educate the executives on the findings along with the suspected fixes needed before the product can roll. She continues sipping her coffee while taking notes and thinking about a strategy.
She came in earlier than usual with the hopes of hammering out details for the presentation. She must know this information inside and out before holding any calls with the executives. They will be asking questions and she needs to know the answers or where to find them. She is holding a call with her team shortly to discuss the latest developments and to brainstorm a potential work around.

She dislikes coming in early and for a brief moment, almost changed her mind. It’s just creepy in the early morning. The parking garage is lit but there aren’t many people moving around at that time and those people that are walking through are doing so for other reasons. The one advantage of coming in early is that you can grab a parking space on a lower floor.

Paige stands up to throw her coffee cup in her trash can and notices it hasn’t been emptied. She walks out of her office and checks the rest of the floor. All the trash cans are full.

Deciding she’d better check the restrooms, she walks down the hall to check how they look. Opening the door she doesn’t have to go in any further as she can see the overflowing can, toilet paper and paper towels on the floor. It appears that no cleaning has been done and that should have been done after she’d left last night.

Heading towards the maintenance closet, she mentally searches through the information she pulled out of the emails this morning in the hopes of finding a work around. When she reaches the maintenance closet door, she knocks and waits. The door doesn’t open so she knocks again. The door finally opens and a man’s head comes out.

“I’m Paige and I work on this floor. Why weren’t the trashcans emptied and the restrooms cleaned last night?”

The man blinks at Paige and shuts the door.

She knocks again.

The door opens and this time the man steps out.

Paige takes a step back as he’s tall, maybe six feet five and he’s big. He’s pushing four hundred pounds easy. A black bear on his hind legs is what he reminds her of as she takes in the dark hair, bushy beard, and the hairy  forearms.

Extending her hand Paige says, “I’m Paige.”

The man looks at her outstretched hand and responds, “I heard you the first time you said it.”

“So can you help me understand why the trash hasn’t been picked up or the restrooms cleaned?” Paige asks, thinking a different approach might work.

“Cuz I didn’t do it,” the man responds. “I had to be somewhere last night.”

“Our contract clearly states that there is to be cleaning throughout the day along with a final cleaning during the evening hours,” she states. “Who’s your supervisor?”

“I don’t think you wanna do that,” the man says taking a menacing step towards her. “You report me and I may lose this job.”

“That isn’t my concern,” Paige retorts. “We are entitled to a clean work place and that is what you are to provide. It’s clearly stated in the contract.”

“I’ll do it now,” the man says. “I’m warning you now. Don’t mention this to my supervisor or we’re going to have issues.”

Paige’s mouth drops open. She turns around and walks back to her office, stunned.

How dare he threaten me and speak to me that way, she thinks pulling her office door closed.

Sitting back behind her desk, she gets sucked back in to developing the presentation for the executives. She is hoping that after the call with her team, they have a work around that will be a viable solution enabling a partial roll-out until IT can fix the issues identified.

She is so absorbed in pulling the presentation together, she forgets about the confrontation, the trash, and the lack of cleanliness in the restroom. Hearing talking, she looks out of her office and sees that the office floor is busy. Looking at the time she sees its mid-morning already and there’s the maintenance man getting the trash. In her hurry to get the presentation done, she forgot about that confrontation and now realizes she needs to hop on the call with her team to talk about a work around.