Dave Lucas - Office Drone - Kind Spirit

It was a cold February morning as Dave trudged through the bitter snow. His coat, being several years old by this point, had several holes that the ice cold wind always seemed to find and stab at his skin with its daggers. Normally he would take the bus to work but due to the freezing temperatures it was delayed causing him to have to walk.

As he arrived at the office he noticed something a bit weird - a homeless man panhandling outside. Normally this wouldn't raise any eyebrows since this city, just like every city, did have a homeless population. But what seemingly set this man apart was his complete disregard for the storm currently occurring. Dave admittedly didn't exactly know were homeless people went during a storm but he figured that they at least had a cardboard box or something to protect them. This man had nothing except a t-shirt and jeans. He felt bad for the man. Sure, on one hand Dave's life wasn't perfect, he had a shit job with a shit boss and lived in a shit apartment with a shit landlord. On the other hand at least he had a job and an apartment. He approached the vagrant and took off his coat - and then immediately regretted it. While it was old and worn out, its absence immediately caused Dave to become a human popsicle. Despite the pain it caused him to feel the coat leave him, he did the right thing and handed it to the man.

"I know it's not much but here you go."

"You are a good man Dave, we think it's time you got rewarded."

_'Wait, what?' Thought Dave. 'How the hell does this guy know my name. Am I about to end up on some YouTube video?'_ He took a quick look around and couldn't find any cameras but what was even stranger was when he looked back at where the homeless man was sitting, he was gone. Before he was able to think about what had just happened, a gust of wind reminded him of the need to get indoors quickly.

As he sat down at his cubicle he was quickly joined by his coworker Bethany.

Bethany was an amazingly talented woman. Smart, kind, and hard working. Due to budget cuts their department had been cut from ten people down to just the two of them. This caused an ungodly amount of work to be dumped on both of their heads. What made a bad situation worse however, was their manager Gabe.

He was a terrible man. Rude, lazy, stupid, and a massive sexist. He never understood what the two of them were working on nor did he ever try to figure it out. All he did all day everyday was yell at Dave saying he wasn't working hard enough. Whenever Bethany tried to stick up for him Gabe would say something like "Women like you need to learn to shut up" and "Why don't I give you the fucking you're so obviously missing". Both of them hated the status quo but what could either of them do about it. Even though the pay was shit, it was still a paycheck and neither of them could afford to lose their jobs. Though if there was one silver lining to this is that all this shared suffering caused them to become best friends as they commiserated on their lot in life.

They both quickly got to work and before long an entire hour had past without Gabe showing his ugly face. This wasn't super unusual. Once or twice a week he would stumble in around lunchtime trying to hide his obvious hangover.

'The more time he spends hungover the less time he spends yelling at me' thought Dave as he enjoyed the peace and quiet. However as the hours drew on he got more and more worried. Some quiet is good, too much quiet is concerning. What could Gabe possibly be up to and how will it make his life even worse.

At around five o'clock, when most people were leaving for the day, he and Beth were still hard at work when Gabe's boss Amanda showed up.

"Oh great, you're both here. Can you please follow me."