A Way Home

He & Flowers

They were there again.

An assortment of pretty colors splashing hues of purple, baby pink, soft blues, yellows, and greens throughout her office. On the corner of her desk. The round center table. On the window sill. At the same time her office was small yet big enough to fit everything. A standard size beat brown desk that sometimes smelled too strongly of musk and heavy-duty paper. Topping it was a HP laptop and a lame black keyboard with a wired black mouse so used it was baby smooth and oily to the touch.

Kim Namjoo was a new fellow intern. This was her third week at Armor CO. that designed and created athletic clothing. A brand that was making headlines and beginning to boom throughout the fitness industry. Not that Namjoo enjoyed exercising, but she was interested in fashion and designing. She had applied through an opening she'd seen on her university campus before graduation. Thought she would try her luck and if she got accepted it would serve as an on-hand experience in the fashion world.

Confident her luck would run out due to the competitive lineup during interview, Namjoo had waited an excruciatingly long week to hear results. Lady Luck had been on her side.

Here she was, returning to her assigned office. Cordoned off into an isolated hallway. Outside the thin wooden door was an elevator across from the room. She always heard it dinging open and close at all hours of the day. It was distracting and annoying, but nothing she could complain about. She was just an entry-level employee and here only for short term.

The thin corridor was lined with four doors that were always closed. No side window let her peek inside. Curiosity always got the best of her, so she'd tried the silver knobs. Doors were locked.

Down the corridor was where life existed. Artificial walls separated cubes from each other. It was where the full-time employees lived their lives. Drinking coffee in front of their huge monitors. Looking up articles, searching the company website, designing on their special pads attached to the computers, talking on phones, doodling, but they were always working on something.

More offices lined the wall. Each one separated with real walls and closed doors consisting of slits for windows that were sometimes left open. Those were the managers' office. The people who handled accounting, research and data, stocks, and connected with the CEO.

In fact, Namjoo had never seen their CEO. Most of the regular full-time employees had never personally met him.

That mysterious aspect of work wasn't Namjoo's worries. She was more focused on assisting the managers. That was where her intern post was positioned. Right under the managers. If they wanted her to make phone calls, she'd make phone calls. If she had to run downstairs for coffee, she would do just that. If they asked for email writeups, paper copying, to run miscellaneous errands within the glass tinted building Namjoo would end up doing that.

It hadn't gotten too serious yet, but her secretarial tasks were easy enough to handle. Most of the managers she had met were nice enough to her.

Kim Namjoo wasn't a person who liked creating trouble for others. Though she had learned the hard way to stick up for herself in particular situations.

Dropping off her purse on the floor behind her desk Namjoo leaned over to smell the fresh vase of blooming peonies. This morning they were a splash of pastel whites and different shades of purples. Whoever had the time to decorate her office with fresh flowers everyday was still a question to her.

Majority of the male employees possessed bellies that poured over their belt line. During lunch at the downstairs cafeteria Namjoo had taken peeks of their ring fingers, which many of them wore. The single ones were either too sour looking or had crooked teeth and never looked her way twice. Too busy to give a care about the temp worker.