The office picnic could get a little heated sometimes. Now was one of those times, and it had nothing to do with the blazing sun. Penny could see the expression in Giles’ eyes as he stood ready to pitch to the final runner. He was determined to win and if John, who was quaking at third base, made any move towards home he was probably going to end up in hospital. Giles took protecting his bailiwick in work very seriously and now this principle was extending to a supposedly friendly game of softball. He was all smiles when their manager Todd was looking but otherwise a vehement glare of competition extended from under his baseball cap. He was ready to do just about anything for that wonderful confection of a fudge cake that Maude had created for the winning team.
The irony was that the Sales SteamRollers were already winning the match easily. Given the existing parameters of heat, freely flowing beer and the numerous injuries that just seemed to appear when Giles was given the bat, well, the Admin Aces just didn’t have a chance. Giles, and his merry men from the sales department were in no mood to brook any opposition and the other team had a lackadaisical attitude at best so the result was a forgone conclusion. Penny turned away, she didn’t want to witness the bloodshed.
At the office the following day Giles was disposed kindly towards his subjects. He regaled the coffee-break group with tales of his softball prowess while Penny tried not to choke on her coffee. He must have seen her lack of adoration because apropos of nothing he raised the topic of the brochure for the McGibbons sales pitch that afternoon. His eyes glinted like chatoyant emeralds as he prepared to stick the knife into her back. She braced herself. She recognised the signs of impending attack. ‘Troglodyte’, she muttered to herself.
‘I just loved the kitsch cover design you came up with, Pen’
‘Don’t call me after a biro’, she thought rebelliously.
‘Yes they do say that camp is making a comeback in graphic design’, he added magnanimously to the laughter of his minions. Seemingly regardless of her Look of Death, he continued his monologue to his fans. He always did have a perverse desire for worship. With a pitying glance at her healthy salad he wolfed down his hamburger between jibes about rabbit food and not getting enough protein in your diet. Penny was tired of biting her tongue. She heard this nonsense from him almost every lunchtime. She daydreamed about what he would look like if he turned into one, a GilesBurger with extra pickle. She wished she could avoid him but their office was far from most alternative eateries and she wasn’t paid enough to have a power lunch elsewhere like Giles did periodically.
‘Did you hear about that abattoir outside town, Giles ? That one where they think they’ve got two confirmed cases of Mad Cow Disease in one week ?’ she queried innocently.
‘They’re talking about withdrawing thousands of burgers from the shelves just as a safety precaution. Makes me glad sometimes that I’m a vegetarian, you can’t catch anything too nasty from a carrot, can you ?’.
She smiled sweetly as he
choked on his burger. It was cheap shot and would only work once but it was worth it to
see his over-inflated stock take a tumble on the employees’ salacious gossip
exchange. Their business was cut-throat enough without lending any legitimacy to the idea that the bully-boy of the office was
an example to be emulated. She swept away from the table, pretending to ignore the cloud
of anger on his brow. She could deal with him after the sales-pitch, if she still had a
job.
As she struggled to tie up a legion of important details before her departure he dropped by her cubicle to renew the attack. He started to point out apparent spelling mistakes in her blurb and Penny struggled to keep her calm. ‘All I want is to survive this pitch’ she tried to say to herself in a calming inner voice. ‘Honestly, this jerk is like a medieval knight. He treats the work place as some kind of jousting tournament. Next thing I know he’ll be waving his sword in my face’. She took a deep breath.
‘I don’t think spelling is your forte, Giles, darling’, she purred in relief after checking the brochure. ‘Look, have a loan of my dictionary. Paradigm really is spelt with a G not an E’
As she sped in a taxi to the presentation she thought about how much Giles got under her skin. She yearned for the kind of life philosophy that let her accept him, perhaps even to like him, but she just couldn’t see that happening. He knew all her weak points, like being touchy about anti-vegetarian jokes, and he prodded them unmercifully whenever he got an opportunity. She wouldn’t be half-surprised if the recent moves to pressure her to improve her already good sales figures had originated in lobbying by him. She knew he had the ear of their managing director, Todd. They had been to the same university.
As they passed a fast-food joint selling chicken burgers the smell wafted into the taxi and she wondered idly about the theory that anything unusual always tastes of chicken. Cannibals even said that humans tasted the same. She toyed with the idea of cooking Giles in a giant cauldron but decided he would definitely give her indigestion.
‘A Giles-Burger, Madame ? Would you like Fries with that ?’ she said aloud much to the amusement of the driver. The mere pronounciation of the ridiculous idea made her laugh. Maybe this presentation would be alright.
By the time she arrived back to the office after 3 hours of continuous questioning and interest from McGibbons it was past tea-time and she had a plan. If she could time things right for the morning she could use Todd’s secretary Margie, a well known scuttlebutt and early riser to spread the rumour for her. It was a sure indication of Margie’s success as gossip-monger that nobody dared to disbelieve a word she circulated. If it came from Margie then it was regarded as gospel and would rapidly disseminate to the very extremities of the company with even the most bashful employee joining the chain.
The key would be getting a sheet or two of watermarked paper from Smithson’s and she had sorted quickly by a phone call to her friend Tanya who was temping there currently. She even found out what font and format they used there. Penny was good at details. She could never abide seeing some tiny item being out of kilter on a sales proposal and this time her ability to eschew sleep was going to work in her favour. She migrated from her normal desk to a more secret one, poured herself a strong cup of java, and set about weaving a plan to bemuse even canny Giles.
Margie was a doppelganger for a hyper hyena when Penny swept into work at 9am the next morning. There were significant looks galore from the communication-focused secretary as she confided her news over the background counterpoint of frantic conversations by the water-cooler.
‘Really ?’ said Penny, oozing sympathy from every pore and listening to Margie’s rapid synopsis of events.
‘So it turns out that Smithson Senior is actually a very orthodox Hindu and he wants to have Giles visit his holiday home with him outside Delhi to hammer out the details of the new contract ? But that’s great isn’t it ? He’ll hardly want Giles to convert or anything, will he ?’
Margie almost drooled in her eagerness to impart the news.
‘No, no. You don’t understand. Smithson is vegetarian. He takes it very serious and eats only macrobio…mac…macrobiological food at his villa. Nothing but beans and lentils apparently. Giles will have to give up his precious burgers for an entire week. And to top it off this is all due to happen the week when Giles has tickets to the Cup Final.’
‘Oh Poor, poor Giles.’
‘Oh I know. Isn’t it enough to excruciate the man ?’
‘You mean it’s excruciating, Margie.’
‘I know what I mean, Penny’, she huffed, the quintessence of wounded pride.
Penny would normally have paled at the thought of offending this woman but after last night’s epiphany she felt invincible. It was usually Giles who removed the oxymoron from phrases like aggressive negotiation and human resources. He jousted for position and didn’t care if he left the occasional victim behind him on the turf. But today was her chance to cause as much bedlam as possible and one mistimed facetious remark to Margie just made her feel more like the maverick employee she was becoming.
She wouldn’t want to imply that she was getting kicks out of having Giles over barrel but sometimes in this life we have to be tad opportunistic and the gist of her joy was that she could afford to do as she liked today.
‘I’m off out, Margie. Can you tell Todd when he comes in that my report on the McGibbon presentation will be on his desk by the end of the day’
‘But …’
Too late. Penny had been working far too hard lately and she was gone for some much needed retail therapy. She wanted to get the ingredients for an eccentric salad. ‘Avocado, banana and stilton. Honey and mustard dressing’, she thought to herself. ‘And a good bottle of wine. And I’ll ring the girls and go for a boogie later. It really is amazing the affection I hold towards a good old-fashioned hornswaggle after today. It’s good for your health. I think it should be available from your doctor.’
Her pace increased as she took the stairs down with a cheerful step. She didn’t want to risk running into Todd in the lift. She felt the lilt of a joyful song in her heart again. She hadn’t realized just how much her faith in humanity and in herself had been seeping away under the relentless pressure from Giles, Todd and Margie.
She knew she should feel guilty about that forged email request for tender which she had left open on Giles’ desk, for Margie to find as she did the postal round. It was all about a ‘thrilling sales opportunity’ from Smithson for Giles. Apparently he was already working on preparing the proposal and it would probably be at least lunchtime before he found out it was all a ruse. By then Todd would have opened her resignation letter. McGibbons’ offer to head their new in-house sales team had just been too hard to resist.
Her tummy rumbled. She had worked through the night on that phoney request and she was feeling a bit peckish. ‘Where’s the nearest vegetable shop ?’ she wondered.
She never wanted to eat another Giles Burger in her life.
This story was originally written for the MurrayTheChicken Literature Prize (which it won) and involved including 60 specific words in a set order during the course of the story. The opportunity to use 'hornswaggle' was just too much to resist.
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Copyright Grace Tierney, 2003