Revenge of the Cube Dweller (5 page)

“Tanzie, could I ask you just to write a memo on this so we can discuss it at the closing meeting with the building security team?”

I see Frank and Hal suppress smirks as they glance at one another.

“Of course, Hal, but there were some rather disturbing findings yesterday.”

“Such as?”

“The security guard asked me if I needed to go to the executive floors.”

Frank looks up from his phone, and Moe puts his pen down.

“What did you say?” Hal asks.

“I said yes. He never asked for a driver’s license or even a business card. He took me all the way to thirty and never once asked who I was.”

“Thirty! You went to thirty?”

“I didn’t think I would get there when I said it. I assumed he would require some ID or call the Building Services Director, like the protocol requires, but he didn’t. We just got in the elevator and rode up there, and—”

“You didn’t get out, did you?” Moe interrupts.

“Yes, I did, and he just left me there.”

“Alone?”

“Yes, alone. He just got back in the elevator and left me there all by myself.”

“Are you sure?” Frank asks.

“As confusing as all this was, yes, Frank, I am sure that yesterday I was left unattended on the executive floor with full access to every office.” I catch myself; the sarcastic tone might undermine my success here.

“You didn’t go into any offices did you?” asks a nervous Moe as he rolls a tiny wax ball between his fingers.

I take a breath. Things are not going quite as planned.

“No. But I could tell they were open, though, just by looking down the hallway.”

“Then you just left … right?” Hal leans slightly toward me.

“Um, right,” I lie. “I just called the elevator, rode down, and had the guard let me out.” I can tell that I am in trouble. All my preparation had assumed that my information would be favorably received.

“For pity’s sake, Tanzie. What were you thinking? What if you had run into one of the executives? What would you have said? That I sent one of my auditors up there to snoop around? How would that make me look?” Hal’s bald head turns red, and Moe shifts in his chair, visibly uncomfortable at having his underling
blindside him at a meeting by having—in his view, anyway—so clearly misunderstood his direction.

“Hal, I thought it would be in management’s best interest to understand any existing vulnerabilities so they could remedy them before someone with sinister motives could exploit them.”

“Why didn’t you call me before you got on the elevator, Tanzie?” Moe chimes in.

“You really shouldn’t have went up there without checking first,” Frank agrees.

“So the guard asks if I want to go up to the executive floor, and I say, ‘Just a minute, let me call and ask someone’?”

“No, Tanzie.” Moe leans toward me pointing his finger. “You should have stopped right there. Once he asked you, that was enough for the report. Why can’t you see that?”

I think,
Because, Moe, then we wouldn’t know that the guard would leave me alone on thirty, or that Marla leaves her password unsecured
. But I can’t explain that to him now. If just being in the foyer on thirty causes this kind of ruckus, then snooping around, no matter how productive it had been, would send these guys through the roof and me out to the unemployment line.

“Don’t be so hard on Tanzie, fellas,” Hal says, settling into his fatherly tone. “What this is telling us is that Tanzie doesn’t have good judgment just yet. We need to be mindful when giving her assignments that may be above her skill level. Now Tanzie,” Hal says, looking me in the eye, “I want you to write up your notes on this, but just stop when the guard
asks
you if you would like to go up to the executive floors. Are we clear about that?”

I cannot help the stunned look that is surely plain on my face by now. I am totally lost in anger, and I know I need to disengage.

“Of course,” I begin. “Would you mind if I excuse myself to get started on that?”

“Good idea, Tanzie,” Hal nods. “I’m sure we’ve all learned a valuable lesson here. Am I right, boys?”

Frank and Moe nod, and I get up, smooth my skirt, and walk out of Hal’s office and back to my cube.

What just went on in there?
I ask myself, rubbing my head with my hands, realizing afterward that I have probably smeared mascara all over my face. Under normal circumstances I would dash off to the ladies’ room to clean up, but I cannot muster the energy.

When Hal’s office door opens a few minutes later, Moe stops by my cube and continues the reprimand. “I’ll take it from here,” he tells me at the end of it, and with that I am dumped from helping him with his audit and reassigned to work for Frank. I feel my face get red and hold back tears at the idea of having failed so publicly.

How can I resurrect my career working for bumpkins incapable of thinking beyond a checklist? I think I have uncovered a major security lapse, and instead of accolades, I am bawled out and taken off the assignment. From experience, I know that it’s best to just move on and wait for another opportunity to shine and redeem myself—I’ll keep my head down and keep doing my job—but for right now, I am devastated.

Working in a cube provides no privacy, so I walk quickly down the hall for a five-minute cool down in the ladies’ room. When I return, my raccoon eyes are replaced by red puffy
ones, and Frank shows up at my desk with a stack of files for me to scan.

“This shouldn’t take long,” I say. “Do you have anything else for me to work on?”

“Not sure. I might have some more filing or document scanning I can send your way. Just sit tight for now.”

Sit tight means sitting there and doing nothing until he is ready to show me what he wants me to do for him. I sit tight until 11:30, at which time I knock on Frank’s office door and ask if it is okay for me to go to lunch. It’s a courtesy most young people don’t observe nowadays. That is one of my redeeming qualities: old-fashioned business manners. I always make sure to ask Frank or Moe, depending on which I am working for, because it makes them feel important and reinforces their superiority. And sure enough, Frank beams as he tells me it is okay for me to go to lunch.

I usually eat at my desk, but today I need to get away. I am too mad to be hungry, but I power-eat two burritos from the food truck outside our building as I walk six blocks to a pocket park with a bench. I break tradition by smoking three cigarettes in a row, hoping that the stiff Oklahoma breeze will carry the residual stink elsewhere. As I walk back to the office, I munch on a couple of Altoids for dessert and am back in my cube ready to continue to sit tightly until summoned.

After a half hour, I overhear Frank tell Hal that he is off to a meeting with the financial group for the rest of the afternoon, which makes it clear that I will not be getting any more assignments that day. It is not unusual for Moe or Frank just to leave me idle for extended periods. As the underling in the department, they view me as dispensable.

I decide to spend my remaining time looking at my Windows XP bible. It is a thick yellow instruction book that explains how to use a desktop computer in the simplest terms for the non-techie. Most companies have moved to at least Windows 7, but not Bishop, where technology is viewed as something for lightweights. “If 20 columnar pads were good enough for us in the ’70s …” I heard the CFO say at an employee meeting once. But although it is archaic, the operating system is still more advanced than what I am used to. I goof around, changing the displays: large font, tiny font, blue background, purple wavy background. I find the date and time function and change that too. I set the date to June 1, 2007, and the time to 6:00 p.m.: my fiftieth birthday party.