It was a big deal of a Zoom call late on a Friday. The Return to the Office announcement everyone had been eagerly awaiting. Or dreading.
I was on one side of the table in the conference room. Wilson and Big Mike across from me. On the screen at the front of the room were a dozen little Zoom boxes with our colleagues. They were sitting in their homes looking smug knowing they were getting a jump on the weekend.
The singing was coming from one of the offices down the hall. It was off-key, bothersome at the very least, and quickly on its way to becoming annoying, especially on a Friday afternoon. I sighed and tried to let it go, but it grew louder. Now it was seriously distracting me from my top priority, following my March Madness bracket on company time.
It had been an exhausting morning of surfing the web on company time, but I had managed to accomplish something. I listed the Tornadex on Craigslist in the hope of finding a sucker, sorry, buyer to take the thing off my hands. The light was at the end of the pandemic tunnel and I needed to unload this industrial strength, turbine powered wind machine before everyone who bought extra fans last year flooded the market.
Wilson and I checked the address for the third time, then glanced at the house.
“Something doesn’t feel right,” he said, from the passenger seat. “It feels…”
“Creepy,” I said.
“Yes.”
“And it’s one in the afternoon. Imagine what this place looks like at night,” I said.
We had been parked in front of the residence for five minutes, both looking for a way out of the assignment. But we both knew that was hopeless. One of us was going to have to approach the front door and ring the bell.
We found the offices of the Money Talks hedge fund crosstown in one of the high rises. Wilson was getting cold feet about confronting the recipients of his stupidity. I, on the other hand had feet warm enough for the two of us.
“I’m not sure this is the right way to handle this,” he said, stopping on the sidewalk in front of the building.
“Okay, so let’s assume this is the worst way ever to handle this,” I said.
I caught sight of Wilson when I passed his office as I was roaming the halls wasting time. The man looked distraught. Sitting behind his desk with his head in his hands. I was no expert, but his body language said something was the matter.