Side Effects

Chapter 5

"This is my laptop?" Alaya asked as I handed it over.

"Yep. There is always a spare on board in case mine breaks overseas, and that one can be yours now. We'll get it hooked up to the plane's Wi-Fi and get you set up as a valid user. I'll call Terry in HR, and she can get your information so you're able to get healthcare and dental coverage, vacation time, all that fun stuff."

"Santa mierda! That sounds really boring and exciting at the same time!" she said while shaking her head. "I don't have any benefits, and yet it sounds like a ton of paperwork."

I nodded at her, fully in agreement. Onboarding at a big company like ours was a pain in the ass. I hadn't even gone into things like life insurance, 401k elections and beneficiaries. No sense scaring her off yet. "Well, on the good side, it will help pass the time."

"What are you going to be doing?" she wondered while I got Terry on the phone.

"I get to review the product we're trying to market in Bangkok to make sure I know what I'm talking about. The last thing I need to do is mess up a presentation and lose the trust of the people we're dealing with. That will affect today, and then any future meetings as well."

"I'd have thought you would already have had them memorized!"

"I have most of them done, but this is a new one that we're marketing in Thailand. We don't have any relationships in Malaysia, so we're hoping to make a good impression with the government to market it there as well. I'm not involved with the research and development, so sometimes I'm a little behind unless I get some forewarning." And considering I was supposed to be at home on vacation at the moment, I might have skipped reading up on this like I normally would have.

That wasn't my fault!

I could hear Alaya talking to Terry, who was one of the kindest women I knew, and was probably going to end up talking Alaya off the ledge a few times as they walked through all the paperwork. In the meantime, I brought up the specifications on the drug I needed to convince people to try, or at least let the people in their country try. Not too surprisingly, it was yet another male performance enhancement drug. What did surprise me though, was that it contained a trace amount of powdered cobra heart. 

Seriously?

In the write up, it went on and on about how it was perfect to enhance male virility, and when combined with our already powerful standard drug, got the name "Spitting Cobra". I remember in Vietnam I was once offered a piece of a grilled cobra heart to improve performance, though I didn't know how widespread that belief was. When I looked at the brochure they provided, there was even a picture of a very phallic looking cobra spitting a stream of venom that looked like... Okay, you know what it looked like. They even gave me several packets of four pills each to hand out as samples. Oh god I was going to kill whoever came up with this marketing campaign! Were they seriously banking on some local beliefs to boost their sales?

Who am I kidding? Of course, they were. And I had to be the one who got it done. I wondered idly how much Alaya would kill me if I told her I hated my job and might be leaving much sooner than expected? I'm sure she'd love to hear that the paperwork torture she was dealing with now might be repeated later if she had to leave with me. On the other hand, I had little doubt that she'd be able to stay with the company if she so desired, so maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

I think I accidentally napped for a bit, a belly full of pancakes and reading boring medical sales information will do that to you. But I woke right up when I heard Alaya cheering.

"Yes! Gracias a Dios! That was horrible!" She stood up to stretch, and I was happy to see a smile on her face. "Okay, I guess it wasn't that bad once I saw the salary."