Tuesdays with Miss Jessica

Part Two

The light was flickering every few seconds revealing and masking the damp patches over the walls, hypnotising me.

It was a standard office light - long with corrugated plastic around it, filled with dead flies. Lazy days were spent staring up at that light, wondering where these fly's lives had gone so wrong, were they alive but forever trapped? Was it the equivalent of fly prison?

Today, I am interrupted by the phone. A ring so loud you have to answer it quickly before it gets too much to handle. This generally results in a rushed telephone manner which has to be repeated three times because the caller can't understand what it is you're trying to say to them.

Woken up from my philosophical daydream this morning, I answered "Occupational Help, how may I health?" instead of the actual "Occupational Health, how may I Help?".

I started mumbling to myself soon after this mistake about the pro's and con's of having a script when answering the phone, and why can't we just say "Hello?", when I heard a laugh on the other end of the phone. At least I had cheered up someone's day. My life has always been the butt of the joke.

In a curt manner I asked how I could help, to which the gentleman replied, "I'd like to speak to Sue Henley please".

"If you hadn't already guessed, you have the wrong department, I'll put you through". And with that, I hung up. No chance for him to say thank you, it would have been full of ridicule anyway.

I'll never know if he actually said thank you or not now, and alas, a new topic to waste time thinking about. I am interrupted by the phone again. We do not get many calls down in Occupational Health, and now I am proudly able to call this 'A Busy Day'.

I answered in much the same way, making the same mistake and mumbling to myself when I heard a familiar little laugh at the other end of the line. It would have been quite a sexy laugh if it hadn't have been at my expense. Feeling this beginning to get a little old already, and in a rush to get back to doing nothing I said:"I take it Sue Henley wasn't there; in that case I'll try Maggie Brooks. I'll stay on the line so that if she's not there I can try someone else"

I typed the appropriate number into the switchboard before he had a chance to respond. I let the ringing go on for a while, slowly hypnotising me, then went back to his line. I said nothing but "Sarah White" and keyed in her extension. Straight to voicemail. I was tempted to tell him to just leave a message and be done with it, but that gave him the option of calling back later to see if she has returned to her desk. I went back to his line and this time just said "Karen". No answer.

I was starting to think that this was a conspiracy, that secretly they have been watching me, daydreaming all day, seeing that the total work I get done in a week is the equivalent of a mornings work for someone else in the building.My imagination went into overdrive and suddenly I could see him, on the phone, in his meeting with his George Clooney good looks, sitting with his agent discussing the role of catching me out. In a moment of heroism he manages to bring the defendant to breaking point where she confesses her daily rituals of half hourly chocolate breaks.

I reconnect to his line and wearily ask him what it is he actually wants.

"A nice wife, a few kids and a home in the country"

Ugh. He was dripping in suaveness. You knew he was the kind of man who had an important office job, somewhere in the city. I'm sure he spent his day taking clients out to lunch and investing their money all over town. And I'm sure he was the type of man who was sleeping with the receptionist even though he had a beautiful wife at home.