Trust in Advertising (5 page)

Trust in Advertising

“Here you go. This is your desk.” He patted the short section of Formica countertop and smiled. “Phone, trashcan, plant, and computer. I’ll show you where you can get office supplies. To get an outside line, dial nine. Someone from tech support will come by later and help you set up an E-mail address. I’ll give you a minute to get situated, and then I’ll start the grand tour.” He turned on his heel and ducked into the nearest office door.

“Home, sweet home.” Lexi dropped her purse down on the floor. She opened the top drawer and found a pile of menus to every restaurant within a ten block radius and a notepad. “Looks like I’m in charge of lunch,” she laughed softly.

After spending a few minutes playing with the phone and computer, Lexi began flipping through the notepad that had been tucked in with the menus. It seemed as if she would be responsible for getting around fifteen lunches a day, and some of these people seemed rather picky:
dressing on the side, no onions,
only fat-free skim milk, and no cheese (lactose intolerant)
were just a few of the messages scribbled alongside the orders.

Tim appeared in the hallway. “Ready to get started?”

Lexi smiled. “Absolutely.”

It was after six that evening by the time Lexi final y knocked on Hope’s door.

“Get in here and tell me everything!” Hope grabbed her arm and dragged her over to the black leather couch in the middle of her apartment. “Spill!”

Lexi smiled at her friend’s exuberance. “Well, the guy I’m working with, Tim, is a goofball. A nice guy, but I can see why he needs an assistant. He’s one of the most hyper people I’ve ever met, a real HR kinda team-building/

motivational-speaker guy. He had me running all over the building today.”

Hope snickered. “No, he didn’t.”

“Oh, yes, he did—all three floors! I hiked the stairs more times that I care to count. The little adventure took up most of my morning.” Lexi laughed as she slipped her shoes off and tucked her legs under herself.

“As goofy as it felt to be wandering around the office like that with a little checklist, at the end of the day, I met a number of the people who I’d be working with, and they all seemed really nice and welcoming.” Lexi grabbed a potato chip out of the bag on the coffee table. “Oh, and my desk is tucked in an alcove at the end of a hallway, the bathrooms are down the hall on the left, and I get 25

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paid every other Friday starting on the ninth. So, all in all, I’d say I had a very successful first day.”

Hope went to the kitchen and brought Lexi back a glass of iced tea. “So, do you have any idea what you’re actually going to be doing at Hunter? Did he go over your responsibilities?”

“Well, the best I can tell, I do a little of everything.” Lexi focused all her attention on the ice cubes floating in her glass.

“And what does that mean?” Hope asked suspiciously.

“Okay, my main responsibility each day is to get the lunch orders and not poison anyone.” Lexi buried her face into her hands at the admission.

“You’re ‘lunch lady’ Lexi?’” Hope asked incredulously. “There has to be more to this job than that. They’re paying you way too much to be the lunch delivery girl.”

Blushing, Lexi raised her head and shrugged. “I know. I need to get them lunch, and I get to make al their copies, so I better become intimately acquainted with the copy machine. I think basically if they need something, they’re going to call me, and I get to run off and do it. I’m not exactly sure what I got myself into with this job.”

“Look on the bright side—at least you won’t get bored. Every day should be a new adventure,” Hope said, trying to sound optimistic.

Lexi sighed. “I suppose you’re right. I never looked at it that way. But you know what? I’m just going to do my job and keep an eye open for any new job openings within Hunter.” Lexi smiled as she stood up and stretched.

“I better go back to my place and eat a real dinner, and I want to do some laundry before bed.”

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” Hope waved goodbye from her spot on the couch as Lexi let herself out.

“Later!” Lexi called over her shoulder.

The rest of the week went by smoothly for Lexi, but she was still relieved when Friday finally arrived. She was getting into a routine at work. Her day started bright and early—she was usually there by seven-thirty to find a pile of papers that seemed to magically appear on her desk each morning. The papers were always covered in fluorescent sticky notes asking for copies or edits to 26

Trust in Advertising

certain aspects of the documents. There were also luncheons to be scheduled and phone calls to be made.

After Lexi finished up with the things that popped up overnight, she went from office to office and took lunch orders. Usually, people would place their lunch requests and in the next breath hand her a new file or paper to work on.

By taking the lunch orders in the morning, she left herself plenty of time to get the additional work done by the end of the day.

As Lexi sat at her computer, placing the lunch orders with the café courier, a green file folder landed on her desk with a smack. She looked up to see Tim standing in the doorway. “Hey, I need a favor.”

“Sure, what do you need?” Her fingers flew across the keyboard of her computer as she scanned the lunch orders before hitting send.

“I need a little inventory done.” The apologetic tone in his voice made her wary.

“Okay, what kind of inventory?”

Tim led Lexi into a massive workroom. Her entire apartment probably could have fit into it. Every inch of wall was covered in either dark cherry wall cabinets or floor-to-ceiling shelving. In the center of the room were two huge work surfaces, also with drawers and shelving underneath. Tucked in the corner was a large, white copy machine that Lexi had nicknamed “Bertha” and a refrigerator.

Over the next fifteen minutes, Tim explained that he needed the inventory done for the quarterly supply order. It became Lexi’s job to go through each cabinet and document al of the unopened packages—every pack of pencils, pens, paper clips, and pair of scissors needed to be accounted for by Monday evening.

Lexi glanced around the room feeling completely overwhelmed with the task Tim had just tossed into her lap. She wandered down the hall back to her desk and flopped into her chair.
Shit, Shit, Shit.
Lexi cursed in her head, wondering how the hell she was going to get this done. Resigned to her fate, she picked up the phone and called Hope to let her know that she’d be late meeting her that night. This new assignment would keep her there well past five o’clock.

She spent the rest of the day on a step ladder, numbering all the cabinets, and then she made her way around the room, starting with the upper cabinets, and recorded the supplies. When she finished a cabinet, she taped it shut with a piece of green tape to help her remember which ones had already been counted.

Around 5:30, Lexi finished the last upper cabinet and would have jumped up and down if her back hadn’t been killing her. She still had all the lower 27

Victoria Michaels

cabinets, which were jam packed full of supplies, to go through. She ran up to the vending machine in the lounge to buy a candy bar and a soda.

Very
nutritious dinner there, Lexi
, she chastised herself.

Without wasting time, she went back into the supply room and found that in the three minutes she had been gone, someone had come into the workroom and rummaged through cabinet number eighteen.

“Oh, come on, people!” Lexi slammed her soda on the counter, sending bubbles cascading out of the can and onto the work surface. “Damn it,” Lexi muttered as she found some paper towels under the sink and soaked up the sticky mess.

She blew a stray clump of hair out of her face, rolled up her sleeves, and bent over the counter to search her papers for the sheet where she’d listed the contents of cabinet eighteen. When she found the correct sheet of paper, she climbed up the ladder and re-counted the stock.

“Red pens? What’s wrong with everyone around here?” she grumbled when she found out what the thief had stolen from her sealed cabinet. “There’s a whole drawer of them.” She flung open a nearby drawer and waved her hand over the pile.

A while later, Lexi found herself in the back of the room sprawled out on the floor, her papers scattered on the carpet as she counted boxes of legal envelopes that were so dusty they had probably been there since the early nineties. As she emptied the next drawer in the stack, she heard a loud banging noise, followed by some colorful cursing.

“Stupid, worthless copy machine! I have a deadline, you know. The least you could do is cooperate, you little bastard,” a female voice snarled.

Lexi peeked her head over the counter and found an older woman with long brown hair slightly streaked with gray shaking the copy machine violently. After she gave Bertha a swift kick and then winced in pain, Lexi cleared her throat.

“Can I help you with something?” Lexi walked over and leaned against the refrigerator, smiling. “I might have a hammer you can use on it. Your foot, however, seems to be taking a real beating.”

The woman grinned sheepishly. “Sorry, dear. I didn’t know anyone else was in here to witness my brutal assault on the office equipment. Why in the world are you still here at this hour on a Friday night?”

Lexi shrugged. “The joys of inventory.” She pointed to the flash drive in the woman’s hand. “What were you trying to do before you decided to annihilate the copier?”

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Trust in Advertising

“My assistant brought me this PowerPoint presentation for a late dinner meeting I have this evening, and I need to print out the pages to make the final presentation packet, but the copier won’t recognize the flash drive, and then the paper jammed when I pulled the tray out while it was making copies …”

her voice trailed off in shame. “Okay, I admit some of that was probably my fault, but … well, the copier started it.” She laughed at the absurdity of her own behavior, and then threw up her hands in resignation. “Help me, please, before I do something I’ll regret to this no good hunk of junk.”

“Let me mess around with this for a second.” Lexi pressed different buttons on the keypad, and then started opening drawers and doors on the copier until she pulled a snarled piece of paper from between the rollers of the copier. “Okay, that was the easy part.” She laughed, tossing the blackened paper into the trashcan.

“I don’t mean to dump this on you, dear,” the woman sat down on a nearby chair and ran her fingers through her hair in frustration, “but I’m on deadline.”

“Trust me, it’s fine. If I count one more box of pens or package of tape, I’ll scream. This is actually a welcome distraction.” Lexi slipped the flash drive into the slot and again went to work on the touch screen of the copier, trying to retrieve the PowerPoint. “This might take me a few minutes.” Lexi scrolled through the help screens and reached for the instruction manual.

“That’s fine. Would you mind if I ran back upstairs? I have my presentation materials spread out in the lounge, and all I need is for someone to set a coffee mug on my storyboards.”

“I’ll be fine,” Lexi said with a smile. “How many copies do you need me to make of everything?”

“Lexi, you’re a lifesaver,” the woman mumbled as she scribbled out a long list.

“I’m sorry, I’ve met so many people this week—I forgot your name.” Lexi looked down at the floor as her cheeks blazed crimson with embarrassment.

“It’s fine, dear. It has been a while. I’m Mrs. Dee, nice to see you again.”

She held out her hand, and Lexi quickly shook it and smiled, happy to finally have a face to go with the voice on her answering machine.

“Nice to meet you, too. Give me a few minutes to get this figured out, and I’ll bring up the copies when I’m done.”

“I can’t thank you enough, dear. I’ll be upstairs organizing the rest of the presentation so I don’t make a fool of myself tonight. Thank you.” Mrs. Dee dashed out the door. A hint of her perfume lingered in the air as Lexi began the intricate task of outsmarting the copy machine.

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Soon, Lexi was victorious in her battle with the large piece of office equipment, and pages began flying into the printing rack. When the whirl of the gears slowed, Lexi grabbed the first crisp stack of papers and began looking through the presentation out of curiosity. It was an ad campaign for a new shoe line that had a great deal of buzz on the west coast because of the famous celebrity who designed the sneakers. When Lexi hit the third page, she found a spelling error.

“What the heck?” She went back and began pouring over each page of the presentation, thoroughly examining each word of the text, and found not only spelling errors, but switched slides that gave the presentation an awkward flow.

Lexi glared down at the papers, biting her lower lip as she struggled with what to do next.
Should I go fix it myself or tell her first? She’s pressed
for time …
Without another thought, Lexi jogged down to her desk, slid the flash drive into her computer, and began editing the misspelled words in the presentation. As she typed, she cradled the phone on her shoulder and dialed the extension for the lounge.