Save Me - Joel Hokka | Blind Channel

Chapter 16: I'm already going through enough

A few weeks had passed since that one evening I got to know the whole band better and spent a last night with Joel. I started to live my normal life again. I went to work like always, chatted a lot with Teija or called her and whenever I didn't want to be at home alone or let out some frustration because of work, I went to my favourite bar again. Joel seemed to keep his promise; he didn't ever show up again at the bar, neither did one of his friends. At least not when I was there but since that happened quite often, almost every other day, I assumed they went to another bar to leave me alone which I was pretty thankful for. Finally I could live the life I was used to again with only very slight changes. But living my normal life also meant that I still had to deal with work and my boss who as always wasn't happy with my work.

"Ms Heikkinen, good to see you here", my boss made his way towards me while already talking to me although I was currently in a call. "We must have a talk. In ten minutes in my office? Yes? Great." And with that, he turned around and left. Oh no, I thought, based on the way he looked at me and how serious his voice sounded, that won't be a positive conversation. I only hoped that he wasn't again unsatisfied with my work but rather wanted to inform me about something, maybe a new colleague or that I couldn't take vacation the days I had planned to. But now was not the time to think about that, I had a customer on the phone.

"Mr Laine, have you ever heard of-", I started a conversation with the man I had just called. But before I could even say the name of the company whose contracts I had to sell, he had already hung up. "Ugh", I sighed. The tenth one today. So far, there was no one I could convince to purchase a product and most of the customers had already hung up before they knew what I wanted to sell them. Since I thought it wouldn't make sense to call the next person on my list because if it was successful, I'd still be in a call when I should be in my boss's office, I decided to just drink a cup of coffee until the ten minutes my boss had been talking about had passed.

Around eight minutes later, my cup of coffee was emptied and I went to my boss's office. "Sit down, Ms Heikkinen", the tall man who seemed to be pretty old already, maybe in his 60s, told me without any further greeting. "You know why you are here?" "Eh... No", I looked at him confused. He hadn't given me any reason so why should I have an idea of why he wanted to talk to me again? "Guessed as much. You don't seem to be clever enough to assume that. Dunning-Kruger-effect, you know? Ah no, I'm sure you haven't heard of that." Okay, my mood hadn't been good before because I had no idea why my boss who was never friendly wanted to talk to me but now I was starting to feel upset.

"You think I don't know the Dunning-Kruger-effect? Oh how wrong you are. I even know it well enough to know that what you call the Dunning-Kruger-effect is not what the effect is actually about", I smiled cheekily. "It's not about not knowing something or whatever. It's about the fact that people tend to overestimate their abilities or knowledge when they are actually rather low. But what you were talking about is that I don't know your actions. I didn't estimate my abilities or knowledge and therefore I also didn't overestimate them. But maybe you did, thinking you'd be so clever knowing the Dunning-Kruger-Effect when in fact, you have no idea what it is about." Maybe it was not a good idea to talk to my boss in this rather unfriendly and impolite way but at that moment, I didn't care about it. I didn't want to let him get away with this, I wanted to show that he shouldn't deal with his workers like that.

"Be careful with what you say, Ms Heikkinen", my boss looked at me unfriendly. "Although... You know, you don't have to be careful anymore because you won't work here any longer anyway. You're fired." "What?", I said in shock. I mean, I knew he wasn't happy with my work but I hadn't expected he'd just fire me now. "Can't you hear? You're fired. You haven't done your work properly from the beginning  but during the last weeks, it's become even worse. Compared to your coworkers, you barely sell anything. We can't afford paying someone for not doing anything. Thus, you gotta find someone else to pay your rent. Maybe a sugar daddy, hm? I heard you'd be someone who'd fit into such a scene."