Stir Sticks III (fiction)

Returning to the office she notes that Dirk’s door is closed and he has a member of the board of directors with him. They both look relaxed, jokey and nonchalant. As Maddy passes his office she hears him bellow her name. She doesn’t like to respond to bellows, so she pretends she hadn’t heard him as she walks into her own office.
She hears Dirk’s office door being wrenched open and Dirk calling her name again. She takes a brief second to set to her features to neutral before looking in his direction. He says her name a third time and gives her a single come-hither motion. She delays the inevitable for a few seconds as she logs back onto her computer (she’s doing this sheerly for spite now), then heads to Dirk’s office. Dirk is reseated and laughing at something the board member is saying. Maddy stands attentively in the doorway and eventually Dirk gives her a signal to advance, by a flick of his hand. It’s a classic power struggle: Dirk continually trying to exert control over Maddy but not being able to subject her to too much because she is the holder of much knowledge, details and intricacies and were she to up and quit, taking her plant and candid photo of her and Jonathan taken at the company Christmas party two years ago with her, Dirk would be left scrambling and would look bad, and Dirk doesn’t like to look bad. From Dirk she has learned that one should always know how to accomplish the tasks of one’s employees.
Dirk wants to be liked, but he goes about it in a heavy-handed way. Buying the first round of drinks for the staff on a pub night is something anyone can do. Maddy’s been with the company longer than Dirk and knows everyone’s back stories. She knows to ask Susan how her little boy is progressing in baseball. To ask Priya how it’s going with her in-laws from India, who are staying with her and her husband for two months. They bring all their HR issues – and sometimes their personal ones – to her, because she is a good listener and confidant, she works hard on their behalf and because she takes a genuine interest in their lives. By the time Dirk swaggers into her office, hands casually thrust in his pockets, leaning against her doorjamb to bestow upon her a nugget of information (never the full story though: he likes to dole it out to her like a miserly aunt eking out chocolates) like, “Let’s hold off on the payroll, it looks like there might be some last minute changes” or “Can you tell me how many vacation days Annie has currently?” she already knows the score. He wants to delay payroll because an employee is leaving: the employee had come to her two days earlier for advice and guidance. Dirk wants to know how many vacation days Annie has because Annie has already booked – without approval from her manager – a month long sojourn to France this summer; Annie’s boss already called her to discuss it. And so Dirk continues to mete out his morsels of knowledge and Maddy continues to tell Dirk she is fully aware of the situation: it was brought to her attention a day or two ago.
Maddy is not adversarial by nature, but Dirk makes her feel she should be watching her back. She doesn’t think this is the way a working relationship should be: Dirk should have her back and she his. Maddy knows too that the nature of their relationship is born from the fact that Dirk is an unhappy man. He has made jokes about his wife and kids in her presence that embarrass her. He stays later than he needs to because he doesn’t want to go home. He resents Maddy’s carefree lifestyle and he is jealous of the relationships that she has fostered with the people she works with and how well she is ingratiated into the social tapestry there.
Maddy has been called into Dirk’s office for two reasons: he wishes her to see him acting in a jocular fashion with a board member (the message here is that the board member is important, and important people find him charming); and he wants to show her off to the board member. This is my quasi-attractive female employee; watch while I tell her what to do.
Dirk doesn’t stand, but nods to the board member and says, “Maddy, this is Doug Jones. He’s on the board of directors. Doug, this is my assistant Maddy”. Maddy shakes Doug’s hand politely, noting that he looks vaguely bored.
“Maddy,” Dirk begins in a voice that she recognizes as a precursor to him asking her to do something that he knows she won’t want to do. “Could you call the McLeery Golf Course and see if you can get a 3 or 3:30 tee time for Doug and I?”
Maddy smiles. Fucker, she thinks. “I’m actually in the middle of a project that Andrew asked me to work on, but I’ll pass this on to the receptionist and have her touch base with you,” she says. She’s lying: the CFO, Andrew, hasn’t asked her to do anything for him today, but she doesn’t like to be treated like a secretary given she has her BA with a major in Economics. She’s hedged her bets that Dirk won’t ask her about the mythical project she’s working on because it will give him the appearance of not knowing what his “assistant” is doing, but more importantly, it will appear that Dirk, the CFO, is unaware what directives his immediate boss is giving to his subordinate.
Seeing a look of utter blankness sweep across his face, she knows she has hedged her bets correctly. “I’ll go speak with reception now,” she says. “It was nice meeting you,” she tells Doug.
“If she can’t get something at McLeery, then have her call UBC,” Doug demands to her retreating back.
When she returns to her desk she wonders what it’s going to be like on the day that she takes her plant and picture and tells Dirk to screw off. She thinks she might make an undignified exit juggling so much stuff.
Maybe she’ll just give her plant to Ryan.