Debbie, evoking Henry the VIII, wore a purple furry thigh-length vest over black leggings tucked into ankle booties with high stacked heels, her red hair in short spikes. Behind her desk, the picture …
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Debbie, evoking Henry the VIII, wore a purple furry thigh-length vest over black leggings tucked into ankle booties with high stacked heels, her red hair in short spikes. Behind her desk, the picture window showed the arc of I-95 leading to the Holland Tunnel, and New Jersey stretching to the Watchung mountains on the horizon. A black ceramic spiked-heel shoe with a flower sticking out where a foot would go in was on her shelf, along with a solitary book, “Effective Business Coaching.”
“I don’t understand how you missed that edit—it was the only thing on the job! What happened?”
Well. If I knew, perhaps I wouldn’t have missed it. Maybe aliens blocked my mind, or I was distracted by my team leader Carolyn boasting about getting our former manager fired. It was rather hard to say in retrospect why I made any particular mistake. “I must have forgotten to look at that page…”
“That’s not what you said before!” Oh, right. When Carolyn first showed me that error and asked me how I missed it, I must have mumbled something different, but I didn’t remember what I had hypothesized to Carolyn.
“I think you’re lying to me.”
“I’ll be more careful next time.”
“This is unacceptable.”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“Just so you understand.”
I go back to my desk, start reading again. “Consequential fungus liability...” Oh, dear what would be worse than to be inconsequential fungus?
Proofreading is the first thing Bartleby preferred not to.
I worked with five other proofreaders. We have been authors, actors, editors, sports writers and computer programmers. I have been an at-home mom and third shift (midnight to 8 a.m.) financial proofreader. My team is headed by Janet and Carolyn, who have been at this office for 15 and eight years. Carolyn’s divorced with one child; Janet’s married with two; I am married with three and we each have a 29-year-old kid. Along with the rest of the women in the department, we all have very large bottoms.
After my meeting with Debbie, I went back to my desk shaken and unhappy. Janet shuffled over and loudly slapped more jobs into my inbox. I have experimented and found you cannot make that slapping noise just by tossing the folders in from a distance, you have to put some muscle into slamming them down into the box to get that sound at that volume.
Carolyn adopts dogs with megaesophagus. Because their digestive systems do not push food through properly, the dogs must be fed propped up in special chairs. The pictures online are adorable. Carolyn used to stink, but the stench has decreased and one can stand next to her a little longer than before, but I still won’t hang my jacket in the closet by our cubicles, where she keeps a few old sweaters. It smells like goats.
Carolyn leads a life of sad persecution. She’s gaslighted by people hiding her work on her desk; her dogs eat her books and glasses; the neighbor who walks her dogs when she’s at work criticizes her housekeeping; and she’s underappreciated at the office. The manager did not even send an official condolence when one of her dogs died, as she had when another proofreader’s mother died.
Debbie called me in for another meeting. Debbie was fully in black, wearing a blazer so tight I mistook it for a leotard, her ensemble set off by red suede ankle boots.
Carolyn sat on the other chair across from Debbie, one ankle crossed over her knee, waggling her foot up and down. Her face was set to neutral, with a tinge of helpful and concerned. Debbie does the talking.
“I didn’t want to bring this up,” (how does such a small woman manage to remind me of Trump hovering behind Clinton at their second debate?) “but Janet brought this to me last week, I didn’t want to mention it, but this seems to be becoming a problem. You remember how you brought in those numbers? Right? You said you’ve done like 900 jobs the last month?”
Debbie pulled a sheet of paper from the folder, a screenshot of the job locator log. Sure enough, it showed I had only done 23 tasks one day, two weeks earlier.
“I’ve been trying to slow down, be sure I have everything right.”
“This is half the amount of jobs you were doing before! How do you think everyone else feels when you’re only doing 23 jobs? This is not acceptable. You have to be more productive. I know how I’d feel if I was coming in early, staying late, and saw you just playing on your phone all day…” Debbie has gotten herself very worked up.
“I’m already going all out. I don’t think I can do any more.”
Debbie’s eyes narrowed and her nose seemed to grow pointier. “What’d you say? I really wish you hadn’t said that.”
The next morning, anxiously awake at 5 a.m., I remembered that a month before, due to the amount of work we were getting, we had folded one task into another; instead of counting them as two jobs, as we had been doing, we were counting them as one.
Once I got to work, I emailed Debbie who was working from home and cc’ed Janet and Carolyn.
Carolyn’s phone rang, “Yes, I was just reading it.” She and Janet gather up papers, and retreat to an empty conference room.
They are in there for two hours.
Eventually they return to their desks, not speaking to me
An hour later I get an email from Debbie.
“That not what we meant. You still suck.”
OK, not phrased exactly like that, but that’s the gist of it.
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