Sign

The stack of contract papers looks at you, you pretend to examine them by intently paging through them, stalling.

"Is there anything you want to ask," enquirers Lisa.

"Just, erm..... I don't have a pen?"

"Here," she replies and hands you a simple ballpoint. You skip back to the signature page and stare at it.

Lisa spoke up, "Just to repeat: Your salary is competitive. There will be many opportunities as the company plans to expand through various acquisitions, and as the personal assistant to Mr. Teller you're already in a pretty high up position in the company."

You give a tense smile at his name. You don't want to sign this. You didn't want everyone telling you what to do. Everything seemed to be making you do things you didn't want to do! In a burst of anger you put the pen to the signature box and scribbled madly and hard. The paper bent at the pen's impression, you swept the pen back and forth making an incomprehensible network of lines, like something out of little kid's school note book. You barely stopped until the signature area was a huge mess of pen marks and then, defiantly, you handed the contract back to Lisa.

She looked at it a second.

"Okay, then, welcome aboard."

Your lipstick mouth dropped open. The lozenge fell out onto the floor and you didn't even react.

"Slightly unconventional signature," Lisa continued still scrutinising your mark, "but legally binding nonetheless. I think I see a 'J' in there somewhere." You close your mouth in time for her to look up. "With that settled, we get you your company photo ID!"