You Know What They Say About Assuming...

I tossed a paper ball across the cubicle to Marty. Unfazed, he turned toward me and narrowed his eyes. It was just another day at our company, Marketing and Me: meetings, Teams messages and tomfoolery.

Marty took out his airpods, “What now,” he said, turning away from his excel sheets of return on investments.

“Did you see that Miles Teller movie this weekend? It finally hit streaming!”

“Yes, you didn’t need to bug me for that, I’m busy.” Marty said, reaching for his airpods again.

“Your work can wait, is it really that important? Anyway, did you like it?”

“It was ok. Cool concept about what the afterlife looks like but I had a feeling it would end that way.”

“Sure, Jan,” I scoffed, flipping my hair. Quoting the Brady Bunch meme was a frequent thing in the office, and I was not immune to it.

Marty rolled his eyes. I guess he had enough of me because he went to look at his computer again, but I stopped him one more time.

“Y’know, Miles Teller voted for Trump?”

Marty turned back towards me.

“Are you for real, Amanda?”

“I swear to God.”

“Guess you can’t trust anyone anymore,” Marty sighed as he turned back to his computer. I smirked to myself, Marty should consider himself lucky to have a coworker like me that was knowledgeable on pop culture. Even though he teased me relentlessly about being chronically online, I knew he was just jealous.

I turned back to my computer, scrolling my email for incoming invoices. Always a never ending cycle of giving and receiving money. And Marty wonders why I’m always trying to bug him, looking at numbers all day gets boring!

The group Teams chat for the accountants pinged and a message from one of our coworkers, Gerald, popped up. Gerald was known for being the “chronic old man” of the group. He was only thirty-four but he spent most of his free time working on his personal garden so he was out of the loop when it came to the latest news. Good thing I was there to help him out, I swear sometimes these people would be lost without me.

Gerald popped into chat because his ten year old had called him “unc” over the weekend. It still boggled my mind that Gerald and his wife had a kid when they were twenty-four. I was twenty-six and I could not even imagine getting married. But Gerald struck me as the type of person to meet his wife freshman year of college then get married as soon as graduation occurred.

“What does that even mean, I’m his dad!” His message read.

“It means he thinks you’re old,” I typed back right away, “it’s just a part of the slang these days.”

“Must have picked that up from the kids on the bus,” Gerald typed back.

Marty glanced over at me after reading the messages.

“I hope you’re happy that you called Gerald old.”

“Uh uh uh, not me, his kid,” I retorted, shoving my imaginary glasses up my nose.

“Ok, Miss always needs to be right,” Marty said.

Our manager, Brittany, chose that moment to walk into the cubicle and Maryy immediately went back to typing. I don’t get why everyone was so intimidated by her, she was just a regular person. Maybe Marty was just jealous because I got all my assignments done early.

“Amanda! Thanks for getting the budget reports in. I presented them at the shareholder's meeting and everyone was so impressed with your work, especially that you had time to add in the pie charts highlighting the surplus!”

“Brittany stop, it’s what I’m here for.”

I caught Marty glancing in our direction so I played up my reactions for his sake.

“Well keep up the good work and you’ll be in the running for the holiday raise this year.”

Brittany left the cubicle and Marty glared in my direction.

“When you’re done gloating, we should go get lunch,” Marty said , putting his computer in sleep mode, not breaking eye contact with me.

“I don’t get why you’re so intimidated by her, is it because you can’t deal with a woman being in power,” I playfully teased as we made our way over to the break room. As we passed by people’s cubicles, they gave assorted hellos our way which I gladly returned. Dang, I loved having a good day.

“No, I feel like she just praises the women at work way more than the guys.”

“Oh cry me a river. Brittany is just trying to reflect our post-Barbie society. You know, the kind where the women are in power as they should be.”

“Seems like favoritism to me.”

I let out an over exaggerated sigh. I had already ha this ongoing discussion with Marty. I couldn’t help it if he didn’t want to accept that women needed good reinforcement at work. Typical whiney man.

Marty and I reached the break room and he immediately buried himself in his phone. I did the same, on principle I always turned off my notifications so that I would only have other people as my distraction. I opened up my Tik Tok and the first video that popped up was, surprise surprise, featuring Miles Teller. Of course my phone had been listening earlier when we were talking about his movie. The video was about how he got his wife an exact replica of her wedding dress since they had lost the original in the wildfires. Ok, that's pretty sweet.

I exited out of the app and went to Google and typed in “Did Miles Teller vote for Trump?” And the results showed that there were rumors of him being anti-vax after he contracted COVID, but he confirmed he did in fact get a shot. Another article said that he had a history of supporting liberal causes.

“What now,” Marty said.

I looked up from my phone, my brow furrowing.

“You had a look on your face,” he said, then contorted his face into a confused, then wide-eyed expression.

“Nothing,” I said. I didn’t want to admit that I had been wrong about the Miles Teller thing or else Marty would never let me live it down. My “Miss Always Right” reputation was on the line here.

“Sure, Jan.” Marty scoffed at me.

“Fine. I was looking online a bit and it turns out that Miles Teller isn’t actually a Trump supporter.”

Marty burst out into a big belly laugh. People at desks near the break room started craning their necks over to look.

“Oh my GOD! You were wrong about something! Amanda, known for being chronically online, was wrong?!”

“Marty. Stop, people are looking.”

“Oh, let them. This is rich! Oh my god this is the best ego check I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s just some trivial celebrity gossip.”

“That you were so convinced about it being true that you told me!”

“I swore it was real, I thought I had heard about it,” I said, trying to preserve the last amount of dignity that I had.

“Yeah, you THOUGHT. Where is the source?”

I opened my mouth then closed again. Marty was right, I didn’t have an exact source, it was just the rumor mill. He had caught me, and for once I didn’t have a smart comment to give back to him.

“That’s what I thought.” Marty looked at me with a shit eating grin. Then he rushed out of the break room and into the bull pen.

“EVERYONE! Our very own Amanda was wrong! She started spreading rumors that Miles Teller was a Trump supporter!” Marty shouted.

People looked up from their desk in confusion, and there were some murmurs of “not cool.” One of our coworkers, Brad, stood up.

“Finally! Something she can’t brag about anymore,” he cheered. A few other guys near him joined in.

Marty glanced back at me, grinning like a mad man.

“Are you happy that you made a fool of me in front of everyone?” I groaned, covering my face. There goes my good day.

“Almost,” Marty said, chuckling. I went back into the break room and tried to eat my lunch in peace, but every so often someone would come in and shake their head at me.

Back at my desk, Marty had printed out a picture from my social media of me as a small kid that was captioned “I like spreading rumors.” I looked over at him, giggling like a child.

“You’re dead,” I mouthed. Marty just shrugged and went back to his spreadsheets. If he wanted to try to play mind games and try to take my ego down a peg, I guess he had succeeded. My own picture now mocked the error of my ways. Well played, Marty, well played. Let’s just hope this is the one and only time that you show me up.