A Story To Tell | Book 2

.57.

:::CHERI:::

"Hey, Cheri..."

I heard my boss, Amanda call my name from behind me as she held up a walky-talky for me. I roll my eyes, not wanting to put that thing in my hands because I know that once she passed it to me, I was never going to see her again, which means that I was going to be spending the rest of my shift watching AUX all day and I hated being on aux duty.

"Now?" I ask her, wanting to object.

"Shift is over, sweetie, and you're the only one who actually watches the aux while everyone else just sits around doing nothing. You're one of the best team managers we've got." She boasted as she sat the walky-talky onto my desk for me. "Don't stress it. Two more hours and thirty minutes left, you'll be out of here." I roll my eyes as I turn away from her as she walked off.

Feeling the need to be a bitch to everybody, I take a deep breath to wash that thought away and pulled up the aux manual to remember what the different codes meant. Aux watching was just boring as hell and stressful at the same damn time. I just couldn't take it, so I went to every other team manager's list of team members to catch others to see if they were manipulating aux time.

I went down the list and had to call out a few names knowing that I was pissing people off, but hell, it was them who were in aux and were getting pissed off with me. I had to get up out of my seat and get a few people straight because I didn't take too kindly to disrespect. I was a new TM here in this place and I'm small as fuck, but you're going to respect my little ass rather you like it or not.

Scrolling further down the line, I notice Tacoia's aux time. She'd been in the return call aux for over fifteen minutes and to my surprise, it was almost undetectable because she was further down at the end of the list without a call time. No one really paid attention to the call time when a person was in aux eight for calling a customer back.

I damn sure didn't feel like being bothered with her ass today, but I kind of knew she wasn't going to make my job easy.

Standing up from my chair, I readjust my outfit before walking over to her desk and cleared my throat, ready to catch her in the act but the closer I got to her seat, I realized that no one was sitting in her seat. I narrowed my eyebrows in confusion wondering why I never saw her walk past me anywhere. Looking around the call center, I tried to spot her out but couldn't find her.

The boy LJ who sat beside her was in the middle of a phone call, so I stood there and waited patiently for him to finish. He looked up at me while answering the customer's questions and I held up my index and middle finger, demanding he put himself in aux 2 so that I could have a talk with him. I had put Tacoia in aux 2 while I stood there.

I took a look at my Rolex to check the time. Just 4:07PM. He got off of the call at about 4:13PM and still Tacoia hadn't made it back and I was starting to get impatient with her and wanting to write her ass up.

"What's up, pretty lady?" LJ asked me, smiling at me with his perfectly white teeth. I smile at him very lightly and leaned into him just a bit.

"Did Tacoia tell you why she's in aux and why she's missing?" I asked him.

"Nah. I don't fuck with Tacoia like that. She just got up and left." He said to me as if he was the least interested in what had happened to Tacoia. I nodded with approval and sighed as I turned away.

Something told me to walk towards the breakroom area and I'd probably find her in there, so I followed that instinct and put myself in aux 5 for a break and handed off my walky-talky to another team manager and promised her I'll be right back to take over. She was looking at me as if I'd just pissed on her, but she was going to be just fine. She was only going to be on aux duty for ten minutes. I hated these lazy ass team managers they had in here. They never wanted to do shit.