The place where you work

The vertical aluminum siding on the front third of the large three-story building in which Sam works was particularly blinding this morning. She carefully drove her 98’ forest green Volvo up the small drive between the poorly parked cars on the right and the towering red brick building to the left. She weaved past the first of two employee entrances, dodging outgoing news vans and the incoming suit wearing anchorpersons and jean and hoody wearing production crew. Her favorite spot under the big tree next to the fence was open and she quickly pulled into it. Four small satellite dishes 100ft in diameter sat neatly in a row next to their 200ft cousin on their rectangular parcel of plush green grass, all cozily nestled within a chain link fence topped with barbed wire. With fifteen minutes until work officially began she killed the engine and listened to a few more minutes of NPR before killing that as well by pulling out the key.
Grabbing her travel mug, the cool aluminum one with the black plastic top and an Eagle emblem near the mouth slit, she locked her car, and shut the doors. Made her way through the asphalt parking lot and jagged lines of cars, over the short expanse of lawn, past the bushes and onto the next span of speckled black asphalt to the old weathered bench on the side of the building near the two green metal dumpsters with black plastic tops. The benches green paint had chipped away, revealing the dark molded wood beneath, and the two vertical matching pieces of plywood that serviced as its legs were slightly askew of one another, causing it to slant steeply to the right. Upon reaching her destination she pulled a cowboy killer out of the right pouch of the brown hooded sweatshirt she was wearing and lit it with the red crack lighter she had bought from speedway the other night, drawn from deep within her front jean pocket. She placed the cool mug of Joe on the matching yellow bench and took a seat.
The speckled black top and expanse of grass on which they stand are constantly littered with weathered cancer sticks. There are three beige plastic 30-gallon Site SaverTM ashtrays around the buildings perimeter. All of which can hold a whopping 14,000 cigarettes and yet they are always filled to the brim with discarded butts. I guess that’s why there are butts beneath the varying beige and wood picnic tables and even intermingled among the bushes that line the building. The cigarette had burned down and now she was smoking the filter. Well... she leaned forward and grabbed her travel mug before propelling herself forward to a standing position and walked through the mass of concrete and buttage, careful to dispense her butt into its proper overstuffed receptacle. Sam continued down the crescent concrete steps to the second employee entrance, reached into the opening of her zip up hoody and withdrew a thin plastic keycard on the end of a black lanyard. The small black box beeped and its tiny red light lit up as she placed the card against it. She waited for the click of the lock, pulled upon the glass door, and found herself on a grey rubber landing once again. Sam stomped up the flight of stairs to her right and bee lined down the hall to her boss’s office. No more crappy assignments. No more drama, I’m finishing the concert today.
A small plump woman looked up from her paperwork as Sam walked into the room, “Good morning Denise, did you have a good weekend?” she asked as she sat at the low profile blue carpeted chair across from her desk. Denise had a round, worried face and a thin layer of stringy black hair across her dome. She had a cast on her left wrist, one she crushed while skiing during work the week before.
“Morning, it was alright. ”
No more doing other peoples jobs. No more drama. No more distractions from my editing.
“Kathy’s coming in today.” She rolled her eyes.
Well, there goes that idea.
“When?” Sam asked
“I don’t know sometime after lunch I suppose” Denise leaned in over her desk at Sam, “You don’t tell her anything, that woman is crazy…Always coming in here, yelling and screaming about everything, she’ll do anything to take me down. You know she wants my job, that’s why she comes in here and tries to run the place all the time...” Sam had learned long ago to nod in situations such as this, so she did. “...You need to stop whatever you’re doing and watch over the shows she brought in so far and the ones she’s coming in with. Make sure it follows the local access rules, we don’t want another Rhonda incident.”
“I’m sorry, a what?”
“Rhonda was a volunteer at their station many years ago, she created content (as many of the volunteers do) and the content was aired. The only issue was that Rhonda’s content wasn’t deemed as being appropriate by the community and, worse yet, she had product placement in the show (the number one ‘no-no,’ of local access) which in turn almost lost the station its funding.”
“Oh, right.”
“So when she comes in, say nothing, just send her to me.”
By the time Denise finished her sentence Sam was already half way out of the door “Kay,” she grumbled and walked out of the room, back down the hall. Swinging her right leg behind her she pivoted toward another dim lit blue hallway.
Sam cursed the day ahead, knowing she wouldn’t be able to finish editing the show today after all, she shuffled up the brown worn out path in the middle of the once blue carpet and then onto the large white tiles that covered the production wires. Everyday. EVERYDAY I come in and she’s complaining and gossiping and overreacting to that woman. Everyday there’s another thing on my list. Oh, what’s that you want me to clean the bathrooms, do three shoots, edit everything that comes in the door, fix all the audio, teach people how to use equipment and how to edit, clean everything, sell programs, check equipment out, contact people for shoots, schedule everyone, run errands for you, put ointment on your damn wrist, corral the boy scouts, make dubs, do a monthly newsletter for the senior center, send everything to you for the okay even though you don’t know anything about what I’m doing or how I do it – when your never around anyway, AND keep Kathy under control? It wasn’t until the floor loudly squeaked beneath her as she passed the control room, causing the four people inside to turn and look out through the glass door to see who was passing, that she mustered up the courage to demand change.
She stopped just past the control room door and pivoted back towards Denise’s office the floor squeaking again as she passed. The faded blue carpet crunched softly under her feet as she turned left at the end of the hall and crossed the wide lobby and stood in the doorway to her dimly lit cave. Breathe. “Denise, I was thinking that I might be able to edit today as we discussed, since it needs to be done tomorrow.” Her face was now flushed and her voice began to tremble, “I have a lot on my plate already, and I simply don’t have the time to watch all of Kathy’s shows as well.” Her hands shook, “Now, I don’t mind compromising and say – trading the Kathy stuff for the library shoot today. But people have been calling and demanding copies of the concert for weeks now and, correct me if I’m wrong, but perhaps my finishing the concert should be top priority. Since it’s sure to give us a profit,” Whereas your power struggle with Kathy certainly does not. She quickly exhaled and braced herself for a response.
The response didn’t come, she squinted into the dark room, there was an empty hole on the black leather computer chair behind Denise’s large oak desk lit by her small green desk lamp, the only real source of light in the dark blood colored room (that and the dim, disheveled torch lamp in the back corner). Paul, the engineer was laughing in the office next door. Sam poked her head in the door and tears were running down his face into his salt and pepper beard. He was in his late 40s and wearing the same blue jeans and red lumberjack shirt he did every day. “Where the hell is Denise?” she asked. He laughed louder still, expelling small amounts of spit from his mouth as he did. She waited for him to settle down, leaning against the doorframe frowning. He ran his hand through his short black hair, “She left, had errands to attend to.”
“Again? Jesus, fine. Whatever I’m just gonna edit the concert.”
If she can’t be bothered to be here, then I’ll just have to make my own priorities.
“Alright, oh! I forgot to tell you, Kathy’s coming in to edit today at one.”
A strange combination of laughter and sighs expelled from her mouth as she again crossed the lobby and pivoted down the hall to the glass door with ‘Editing,’ etched in white. Kathy was one of the volunteers and it was Sam’s job to “Teach,” them to edit their own packages. This usually resulted in hours spent teaching them how to use a computer rather than showing them how to use the program. Though one plus about Kathy was that she knew the program rather well and usually came in to learn animation tips and tricks rather than needing an editing babysitter. The control room squeaked as she passed, the people inside glanced over, and she entered the small room where one Mac, seven Dells, and twelve monitors lined the white walls. She sat on the black computer chair near the Mac, trying to keep her balance on its worn out frame and stared at the square black clock on the wall. She turned the Dell on and opened the concert file up. The room was hot from the processors and made her want to sleep. She began editing the program and got an hour in before she had to take a brake and let it render. Only 15 minutes of footage to go. She glanced up at the clock as she left the small warm room marked ‘Editing’ 12:00, that gives me plenty of time before Kathy gets here. She slithered down the narrow hallway, dodging fellow nameless co-workers with intense attention on the progression of her sandaled feet. She poured herself a cup of watered down coffee from the machine between the offices of Denise and Paul. Denise was still gone. Again she traveled across the lobby and pivoted down the dim blue hall to the editing room. She sat again on the old creaky chair and started to edit, but the mouse wouldn’t move. She slammed it on the desk and sighed and quickly pressed the buttons ‘ctrl-alt-delete’ as she had done countless times before, Shit! No response. Sam rubbed her forehead and blew her brown bangs out of her face before accepting the fate of her project and forcing the computer into a hard restart. She glanced at the clock 12:24 the computer had restarted and she was ready to start editing again. She opened the projects media files and placed her cursor over the same point she had edited an hour before. ‘ctrl-T’ splice, move, delete. Save. The floor squeaked and she snapped her head toward the hall Kathy’s here.
She was a large woman, both in body and in character. She wore a colorful muumuu with black stretch pants and shoes, and had bright red lipstick with some blue eye shadow accompaniment, which made her blue eyes seem perpetually in the attack position. Her thin shoulder length blonde hair bounced from side to side as she waddled into the room. “Hey kiddo!” She smiled and patted Sam on the head. “Denise isn’t here is she?” Sam shook her head ‘no’ “Oh, good she trying to censor my work! Can you believe that woman?” Sam shook her head again, “Craziness.” Kathy continued to explain to Sam how insane and vindictive Denise was (which was on the most part true) for about an hour. Sam interjected every now and then with the appropriate “No! Really?,” and “I know,” but focused most of her attention on her project. She had typed her final ‘Ctrl-T, delete, save,’ when Kathy said “So, I’m working on the latest installment of Lunch with Kathy and saw you used some cool animation on your last project, could you show me how to do that?” Done. Sam saved the finished concert video and gave Kathy a huge smile, “But of course, have a seat!” she said, offering Kathy her chair.