Monday Blues

I hate office birthday celebrations. It’s always my job to sort out the cake, buy and circulate a card for everyone to sign, make sure there is a meeting room free, and force the whole office to go and celebrate. Often, I don’t even know them (or worse, I know them but don’t like them).

Today, I returned to the office after a week off. And oh look, it’s Aimée’s birthday today. And I’m on the hook to manage it, and no one did Jack during the time I was away. And I low-key hate Aimée. She’s a star salesperson, and she treats the rest of us like village idiots.

The rest of the sales team will be happy to celebrate her birthday. The management team will be happy. The clerical workers will try to avoid signing her card and will come to the celebration for long enough to score some cupcakes, then say they have a deadline to meet, and they’ll eat at their desks. And guess who has to hang around to clean up after it’s over? Yep, you guessed it. And Aimée won’t thank me for it, she’s too important to think about the office manager who makes this little ego boost happen for her.

Of course, I don’t have any spare birthday cards that I can press into service. I used my last spare two weeks ago, just before my week off to attend my grandmother’s funeral. We always have plenty of sodas and juices for lunchtime meetings and client visits. The cupcakes or birthday cake will be generic from a store, delivered just after lunch. But I have to go out to buy a large birthday card and walk it around the office to make sure everyone signs it. That will take up all of my morning.

I check my messages to make sure there’s nothing urgent for me to do first, then head out to do the shopping. I have a favorite cake shop who always come through for me, so I stop there first and put a fancy and probably completely flavorless birthday cake on our account, to be delivered at 1:30.

In the card shop, I pick out half a dozen overpriced, oversized cards suitable for office celebrations. When I go to pay for them, I reach into my purse. My wallet and phone are missing. I’m sure I put the phone in my purse when I left the office, and my wallet lives in there all the time.

I turn my purse out on the counter, sure I must have somehow lost them in there. The clerk is getting impatient, and a line is forming behind me. “Excuse me,” I mutter to the clerk, “I seem to have lost my wallet. I’ll come back in a few minutes.”

He and the people in line are pleased to see me go. I stand by the doorway, mentally running through my morning. I can almost see myself putting the phone in my purse before leaving the office. I walked out on to the busy street, pushing past people. Was there a pickpocket among those people? I was irritable and in a hurry – I might not have noticed. Then the cake shop. I didn’t need my wallet there, but did I take out my phone to check it? I think I did.

I make my way back to the cake shop, hoping that they have my wallet and my phone. The girl at the counter waves me over, and I breathe a sigh of relief. “You were in such a hurry, you left this behind!” she says, happily brandishing my wallet. I thank her profusely and then ask her about the phone. Her face falls. “No, I think you still had it in your hand when you left. I didn’t see the wallet before you disappeared, but I was watching you check your phone as you walked.”

I sort of remembered doing that. So, I had walked out with my phone in my hand. I think I dropped it back in my purse, but I can’t be sure. Obviously I was distracted. Perhaps I’d dropped it. “Can I use your phone?” I ask miserably.

“Come around behind the counter,” she says gently. “You can use the phone in the office.”

I thank her and go to sit in the office. I’m usually a very organized person. Most people wouldn’t have a list of important phone numbers in their purse, but of course I do. I call my own number first, in the vague hope that I dropped it and some good Samaritan picked it up. It rings but no one answers. I leave a message on the voicemail, just in case it’s been handed in somewhere, and they think to check the messages. Right, that’ll happen.

Now I call the phone company, advise them that my phone is lost, and ask them to suspend service and send me out a new phone with a new SIM card to my office. That will take a few days, and I am lost both personally and professionally without my phone.

Walking back out of the office, I stop to thank the girl who had been so kind and helpful. Seeing my face, she says “Hey, I’m going on a break and you could use a coffee. Come and have one with me?” My heart is still beating fast, and I’m shaking. I have a lot of things to do, but I owe her for her help.

“I’d love to. And now I have my wallet so I can pay!”

We walk over the road to the Starbucks, order our drinks and sit down in armchairs. We now know each other’s names, having shared them with a barista we don’t know. “Valerie, I’m so grateful to you. You went out of your way to take care of my wallet and to let me use the phone in private. And you’re right – I really need to stop and get myself together.”

Valerie smiles. “It’s honestly the very least I could do, Thuy. Did I say that right? I know how to spell it and I’ve heard you say it, but it’s so embarrassing when you say an unusual name wrong, and people are too polite to correct you.”

I laugh. “Almost everyone gets it wrong first time, but you said it perfectly. Your customer service training is showing.”

“Oh gosh, I hope so. I want to get a better job with prospects, but retail is all I’ve found so far. I’m putting in a year or so here, then trying to find a job that’s a step up.” She smiles with the confidence of youth, with no more than a touch of desperation behind it.

“It’s a long haul.” I tell her. “I’m nearly thirty, and I’m an office manager. Sounds impressive, but it means a lot of buying cakes and birthday cards.”

She nods. “But it is impressive. You don’t have to get yelled at by everyone who comes in and blamed for mistakes you didn’t make on a job you have no control over. I’d swap places with you in a heartbeat.”

I know retail is hard. I used to work in a mall on school vacations. Valerie looks about nineteen years old, and school clearly didn’t prepare her for the outright meanness of the average shopper.

“You have good social skills and you take the extra time to care. That will serve you well in any job you take on in the future,” I say warmly, “and I’ll be happy to write a reference for you if you need one.” I slide a business card across to her, and her mouth drops open slightly.

“I just have a store card, not even one with my name on it, but I’ll put my name and cell phone number on it.” She does so, and then hands it to me. “Look, I know you’re busy, and I need to get back to work. But I’d love to have coffee with you again some time.”

I like her. She’s straightforward and eager to please. I finish my coffee, dropping my cup in the bin as we walk out. “I’d like that too. How about a drink after work one day this week? And thank you for all your help today.”

I go back to the card shop and buy the stupid cards, then head to the office with them. Anil, the CFO, glares at me. “Where have you been, Thuy? You didn’t pick up your phone or reply to my texts.”

I remember Valerie and plaster a customer service smile on my face. “I’m so sorry, Anil. I had to get a cake and a card for Aimée’s birthday today, and I lost my phone. I think someone stole it out of my purse.”

He has no time for my excuses. “Well, don’t let it happen again. I need lunch sent in for an important meeting. Six people, one is vegetarian and another needs kosher food. Get it delivered by noon.”

Anil hurries off, and I check the time. Great. It’s eleven already. I need to drop everything and get on to the caterer immediately.

By the time I start walking the card around the office, I have an hour to go before the celebration. Luckily, Aimée is out at lunch, so I skip through the sales team, waiting patiently while each of them thinks of something clever to write on the card. Then I go to the office workers, making nice with each of them so that at least one in three of them deigns to sign the card. They like Aimée about as much as I do, so the best they will do is sign, no personal messages from any of them.

I can’t get to the management team, because they are of course in Anil’s meeting. I put the card in its envelope, set it on the table in the spare meeting room, and set up the drinks and napkins and forks ready for the “impromptu” celebration. The cake arrives on time, and I set it on display.

Finally, I get back to my desk and manage to get about fifteen minutes’ work done before I see Aimée returning to the office. I text the management team with the time and location of the birthday celebration, then start to move the worker bees into the meeting room, before asking the sales team to join us. Miraculously, the management team all walk in at the same time as Aimée.

I give a quick introductory speech, wish her a happy birthday, and pass the card to her. She graciously accepts, and then the management team push forward to add their signatures before she can read everyone’s best wishes. “Thank you, Thooey,” she says as she opens the card. “Oh, but you didn’t sign it. Was that too much for you to do?”

Everyone laughs, except Anil, who shoots me a look of death. It’s been a long day already, and I’m still upset about my grandmother’s death. No, nobody had offered me their sympathy, and I didn’t get a card from the office, because I wasn’t there to arrange it. Now Aimée has decided to make me look like an incompetent fool. I take a deep breath, and fix a hard smile on my face.

“Actually, my name is Thuy. We’ve both worked here for two years, but you’ve never bothered to find out how to say it. Or perhaps you’re just rude enough to mispronounce it deliberately. I didn’t sign your card because you’re a miserable bitch who puts me down at every opportunity. And because this is my last day here.” I look over at Anil, who is about to blow a gasket. “Take your lousy job and stick it where the sun don’t shine. You don’t deserve it, but I’ve found my own replacement. You’ll find her more tolerant than me. I’m going to apply for a retail job where I don’t have to put up with this nonsense.” I hand him Valerie’s card. And I walk out of the room, purse in hand, and head back to the cake shop to apply for a job.