T's Hopeline | ✓

4. Meeting

4. Meeting

Today is my first staff meeting, it's a Monday and I'm guessing we are going to go over the progress we've made though our callers are supposed to remain anonymous...

I'm not one of the first people to sit but at least I'm not tardy. I take my seat and look around, I don't recognise anyone. I am a bit relieved about it because I don't think this job would do my little social life any favours...

Melissa finally arrives. She's wearing a pair of black skinny jeans with a white blouse and a peach blazer, I must admit it really suits and compliments her body. I always pictured the boss, of any firm, as someone old with a bad personality complemented by a crappy sense of style but instead I am introduced to this beautiful Latina with killer legs and a sweetheart personality.

"Morning everyone," she says with a big smile on her face. She sits down on the last vacant chair, biggest one. It's clearly for meant her and it makes her look more important, grand. "First of all, for those who haven't met her yet, this is Tessa. She joined us not too long after our last staff meeting." I can feel my cheek heating up a bit as everyone greets me and a girl does a head-to-toe visual inspection, judgy are we? "So how is everyone?"

Apparently, we all give monthly updates and report progress and deliver papers with everything from complaints to client progression written on them. After collecting all of them, she introduces something new to the whole team. We're the staff but we're all a team, right? I hope so... I should really get to know these people!

"There has a big change to our interaction with our callers. I've taken the opportunity to improve it by purchasing mobile phones for our more serious clients." She uses her hands to make air quotations marks since they're not exactly our clients but, at the same time, they are... "I understand your enthusiasm however this is your work phone. Every time you use this your activity will be recorded and stored in our company's server. Now when I say they are for your most serious callers, I mean they are for the people who are in deep problems, emotional, physical or social problems. This means people with anorexia, bulimia, severe social awkwardness, bullying victims and specially depression and people with recurrent suicidal thoughts. Those are the hardest to deal with and please if you can't help them, if they are out of your league please do everyone a favour and tell them to call professionals and direct their calls to me if things don't go the right way. I'm sure some of you aren't aware of it but I have a PhD in Phycology and a degree on Sociology. So if anything gets out of hand, please bring it to me!"

She takes a second to breathe before continuing. She speaks at quite a fast speed like me when I'm nervous... She then closes this meeting with a little question: "This will also only work when the most frequent client with red or red-yellow tags call, it will allow you to not only check up on them but to also be available to them more often. So do any of you have something to say? Any problems or simply something you would like to share?"

Everyone starts shaking their heads and looking around, trying to find someone ready to share and say something. However nobody did, everyone stayed pretty quiet until Melissa dismissed us all.

As I was leaving I hear Melissa call my name. "Tessa, could I please talk to you?" I nod and follow her to her office. She opens the door and stands by it, ready to close it after I enter.

"Wow" Her office is nothing like I expected it to be! It's filled with floor to ceiling wooden bookshelves and cabinets with old and big books and tiny decoration items in a very monochromatic palette. For the desk, she has a monstrosity of an also wooden desk with a black top, is that granite? It looks like it! On top of it is a big Mac computer with several stereotypical and old-fashioned items including the old green desk lamp... It's so unlike that I thought she would have!