Personal Days

Chapter 1 Who died? On the surface, it's relaxed. There was a time when we all dressed crisply, but something's changed this summer. Now while the weather lasts we wear loose pants, canvas sneakers, clogs. Pru slips on flip-flops under her desk. It's so hot out and thus every day is potentially casual Friday. We have carte blanche to wear T-shirts featuring the comical logos of exterminating companies, advertising slogans from the early '80s. Where's the beef? We dress like we don't make much money, which is true for at least half of us. The trick is figuring out which half. We go out for drinks together one or two nights a week, sometimes three, to take the edge off. Three is too much. We make careful note of who buys a round, who sits back and lets the booze magically appear. It's possible we can't stand each other but at this point we're helpless in the company of outsiders. Sometimes one of the guys will come to work in a coat and tie, just to freak the others out. On these days the guard in the lobby will joke, Who died? And we will laugh or pretend to laugh. The Sprout In summer the Sprout, our boss, suggests we form a softball team. His name is actually Russell. We refer to him as the Sprout, because Russell ->Brussels->brussels-> sprouts-> the Sprout. No one knows who came up with the name first. We're incredibly mature. Also once in a while he has a bit of comb-proof hair sprouting from his scalp's left rear quadrant. Jonah says it's hard to take the Sprout seriously because he's always using i.e. and e.g. in his sentences, vigorously but interchangeably, a mark of weak character. He sometimes gives us little salutes when he sees us in the hall. Lately he's been flashing the peace sign. Sixty-five percent of the time he acts like he's our friend but we should remember the saying:Friends don't fire friends. Sticks and carrots Sixty-five percent of the timeis what the Sprout would call aguesstimate. He's always breaking things down into precise percentages. He used to be almost normal to talk to, but now he'll ask if we're on thesame pageand say something is a no-brainer, all in a single sentence. It's not just the frequency of these expressions but their haphazard use. Last week he told Laars to think outside the box. They were talking about which size manila folders worked best. Afterward he said,Keep me in the loop and let's touch base next week.Pru has wondered if the Sprout, a proud native of Canada, is taking a class in annoying American English. His new thing is a variation onI gave you a carrot,but I also need to show you the stick. So far this month, he's said it to Pru, to Jack II, to Laars.So show us already, Pru complains to Lizzie. The Sprout understands that it sounds a little sadistic, and lets us know he recognizes this menacing aspect, at the same time wanting us to understand that he doesn't actually mean it in that way. Jonah's take on it is that he must mean it in that way, or else he'd use another phrase. A league record Softball is a morale-boosting carrot that the Sprout most likely has read about in a handbook or learned at that seminar he goes to every March. Morale has been low since the Firings began last year. Pru says morale is a word thrown around only in the context of its absence. You never look at a hot young thing and say, Check out that spring chicken, but only use it to describe your great-aunt: She's no spring chicken. Pru has a point. We tend to trust her, with her serious eyebrows and inevitable skeptical hmmm. She went to graduate schoolPark, Ed is the author of 'Personal Days', published 2008 under ISBN 9780812978575 and ISBN 0812978579.