The other lunch table

It felt a bit weird, but the regular writers were at their own table, and I wasn't sitting with them. I was sitting with Gloria and Helen instead. "Ah, the new guy joined us for the day?", Helen asked. "Yeah, I've promised Gloria to help if I have the time this week, and well, I do have the time right now."

Helen: "So new and already playing the hero, huh? This office might have too many damsels-in-distress for you to save, though."

I had to chuckle a bit. "Oh right Gloria, I forgot to ask earlier. Where's Floria? I assume she's working from home?"

Gloria: "Yeah, she does that every Monday."

James: "I get it, Monday mornings can be brutal sometimes."

Gloria: "Yeah, she doesn't even have the worst of it. When my Monday starts, I'm the one that has the pile of work."

James: "That's true, but at least I'm here for today."

For a while, we sat there in silence. I got along well with Gloria and Helen, but we were just acquaintances. I didn't really have a lot of things to talk about with them, you know? It felt a bit like slipping a bit into my old self again, because I just... gave up on trying to make a meaningful conversation. The problem was not that I was boring anymore, and had nothing but my job to talk about, it's that you can't casually tell people that you fucked your own mother last night. I didn't have anything in my private life I could really talk about at a lunch table.

After the lunch break, we continued to work, but Gloria ran into trouble. "James, I think we are finding more and more comments that I have to deal with. Every time I'm done with one, I see that you've added two more to my list." "Should I take a break? I mean, the unfiltered pile of comments won't filter itself, you know?" "Yeah, I guess you're right. We'll see after you're done what we'll do about the disparity." Gloria +1SP (-24SP)

After another half an hour, Christine was walking through the corridor and entered the room Gloria and I worked in. "Gloria, James isn't here, ri-?" She seemed surprised to see me. "Hm, what is it, Christine?", I ask, barely looking up from the monitor. "Oh, uhm sorry, I just kinda assumed you didn't... Anyway, Beth wants to talk to you and she made me look for where you were." "I'll be right back, okay Gloria?" She just nodded.

"So Beth makes you run the errands when I'm not available?", I try to make light of the situation. "Y-Yeah." She was clearly annoyed about something. "I'll try to be in the office next week again, okay?" "Th-Thanks, James." We had arrived at Beth's office and Christine simply went to her place, continuing writing and researching for her next article.

"Hello James. I want to talk about your article." I couldn't read her face, in all honesty. "Don't worry, it's nothing bad, quite the opposite, in fact. Your article seems to be going viral right now!"

"O-Oh, that's wonderful. I'm glad so many people enjoyed it."

"Can you start writing more? I'd like one for next week's issue, if possible."

"Well, I'm not so sure about that, I don't have too much time this week, with all the editing and family stuff going on. Plus I had a head start on research last time. I picked a format that could be made into a series easily, though. I think the best course of action for now would be to make it a series that releases every two weeks and help either you with editing or Gloria with moderation."

"I don't like this, viral stuff fizzles out quickly. But I guess rushing it isn't a great option either." Beth +10SP (-60SP) "The most important thing is to keep people hooked. We've doubled our subscriber numbers for now, but if they don't stick around... Well, even if it's just a one time thing, we'll at least get a new coffee machine, I'm sure your colleagues will be happy you got them that. And if even just one in twelve of these new subscribers stay, I should have the money to hire someone new. But I might have to split that into a part-time help for Gloria and a part-time editor."

"So in other words... If I want to keep this job past the three months, I have to get more people to stay subscribed?"

"I didn't say that. I can't make any promises yet." After a brief pause, she continued: "I know you want a stable job and I know how hard it is in our industry, but... I'm sorry, it's too early for me to promise anything, you know? You just wrote an article you're passionate about, you didn't think about optimizing it for search engines and recommendation algorithms. I'm glad you wrote this successful article here, but I need to see that this wasn't just a lucky find or just a brief flash in the dark."

"I-I see. I promise to have an article ready Friday next week, boss."

"Actually James, that reminds me. Would you mind explaining your life situation right now? I know I asked you to do so at our next office meeting, but we're already here."

"Oh, sure. You know GRC? Well, my father is in huge legal trouble and I'm supposed to be the caretaker now. My weekend was spent on editing articles, cooperating with the police, and getting a hold of everything I need to know to keep the company running."

"Your father owns GRC? They rent out this office space, quite cheaply in fact. Well I guess, you rent it out cheaply now. Will you raise the rent anytime soon?" I expected that maybe one or two of my coworkers rent from GRC, but not the office... It's great for me though, it seems to allow the company to operate better than others.

"No, don't worry. For now, I couldn't, even if I wanted to, as I'm only the caretaker. But even after that, I intend to keep the prices as low as I can. The company can be run quite effectively, so it's not a big deal for me at the moment to do both, but I'm going to need a somewhat free day soon."

"Thanks, James. I hope you can enjoy the rest of the week a bit more."

I returned to Gloria, who still hadn't finished through her more complex pile. I continued sorting through the unfiltered reports, until I was done. "How much do you have left, Gloria?" "Still over a hundred, ugh."

"Mind if I help you?"

She was thinking about it. I could clearly see her looking at the time on her screen and doing the math on when she'd be home. "Fuck it, you've done a good job today already, I think I can trust you with this. Just don't tell Beth, okay? Since I'll be on the hook for this." Gloria +8SP (-17SP) "Sure, don't worry about it."

For a little while, we continued, until we were finally done at 3:30PM. Gloria got out of her chair, stretching in the orange sunlight of the setting sun, and simply said: "Thank you James, it's been ages since I was able to go home this early."

For the next 90 minutes though, my workday wasn't over, I edited some articles from the freelancers. I expected them to send me the articles later, but I had basically read through most of the ones we expected.