Having the weekend plus the four days last week to recover, Paige is feeling more like herself. She pushed her boss and HR to allow her a return to half days for a bit. The negotiation on their end though, is that she work those half days from home. She couldn’t take the inactivity, audio books, and watching tv or streaming from her apps. Her mind feels lazy and she knows working will keep it active as well as limber.
Right now, she is struggling with length of time it’s taking the IT department to help her get the new laptop up and running. She’s been on the phone with them for over an hour now. The individual at the other end of the line continues assuring her they are almost done. There’s a small piece of her that thinks they are just telling her what they think she wants to hear instead of the actual truth.
The police have been unable to locate the laptop that was stolen. Security has eliminated her involvement from the investigation, and they will be working directly with the police to solve the crime. Apparently, the initial thought by security was that she’d been in on the heist. After she’d been interviewed at her apartment by security for a long period of time, they determined that she’d known nothing. Of course, she’d been telling them that from day one.
“Ma’am, everything is now ready,” the IT rep advises. “Reboot your laptop now and log on. I am going to stay on the line to be sure that everything appears after you log on.”
“Okay, thank you,” Paige responds and begins the process requested. To her surprise, everything appears that she needs after the reboot. “It appears everything is loaded, and I have the access I need. Thank you.”
“My pleasure ma’am. I will be closing out the ticket and ask that you complete the survey that will be sent.”
“Got it. Thanks.”
Paige claps her hands together like a schoolgirl, gently though as to not shake up her head too much. Then logs into her applications including the messaging system. Her team is aware that she’s coming back for half days and will be working from home. She’s also pretty sure everyone in the building knows as well because the rumor mill works rapidly in the company.
Her instant messaging immediately starts sounding as peers and team members are welcoming her back. Working her way through those nice messages, she sees one from Bets her friend from another department. As she makes her way through the message, she finds her heart galloping like a thoroughbred on race day.
Bets shared a few months ago that she was seeing someone in the building, a guy named Joe. Both Bets and Joe have significant others along with kids in the mix but that hadn’t deterred Bets. Joe started out as a nice guy and then became possessive. There has also been glimpses of creepiness akin to stalker behavior. That’s when Bets began questioning her relationship with Joe and whether she wants to risk her long term relationship for an iffy situation with someone like him.
Avoiding the walk to the parking garage so she didn’t see Bets and Joe together had taken some coordination. Paige had asked Bets to text her when she was leaving because she didn’t want to see them together. She knew there was some kissing and other things occurring in that parking garage with those two. Her thoughts had been that without seeing them together, if this ended up in court it would come down to just the conversations she and Bets had with no visuals. For whatever reason, that thought had brought her a little bit of peace.
When Bets shared her interest in Joe, Paige strongly urged her to ignore the feelings and emphasized it was the project coupled with the hours driving their desire. With Paige’s time at the company, she’s seen side relationships start because of the working conditions or workload. When there’s a project and you’re thrust into working with someone forty plus hours a week, sometimes people get caught up in their emotions. She’s never done it and has no intentions of mixing business with pleasure, but she’s seen it happen. She’d encouraged Bets to head to security if Joe started getting pushy or violent and apparently while she was out, that’s exactly what happened. Security is now involved and will be meeting with Joe in the very near future.