by Liza Palmer
“Crissakes,” I say, quickly reading the new offerings. These five buttons are all different types of coffees. Not lattes or mochas, which I expect await me under the Gourmet Drinks button—or are they just Hot Beverages? We may never know. No, these new five buttons each describe an actual coffee bean.
This is the worst Choose Your Own Adventure game in the world.
I scan the offerings. What the fuck is a Coffee 50-50 and shouldn’t Hot Water be under Hot Beverages? I sneak a quick glance back at the line. It’s grown by three people. Okay, concentrate. I choose something called the SOM: Sip of the Month. I bend down, once again making sure my mug is well placed on the drip tray. Nothing. I stand back up. And where there were once those five buttons there are now three new buttons. Another quick glance back at the line.
“Do you need some help?” Thornton asks.
“Nope. I’ve got it,” I say. Thornton nods, smiling.
I steady my breathing and turn back around. These three buttons are sizes. Would I like a small, medium, or large coffee? I want a large. I need a large. But, not knowing what their definitions of these things are, I choose the medium. Confident I’m finally at the end now, I bend down once again, shift my mug around on the drip tray and … nothing.
What the fuck?
I stand back up and where there were three buttons there are now five new buttons. I’m supposed to pick which strength I’d like my coffee. Would I like my coffee mild, regular, or strong? Also? You know what, while I’m here on this, the thousandth screen, would I like to add milk or do something they call “whip the coffee”?
“Lotta options!” I yelp to no one.
I punch the Strong button with a single-minded fury that shocks even me. And this time, instead of bending over once again, I stand and await the next inevitable screen because apparently this is some kind of Sisyphean exercise to see just how pathetic and obsessed those in search of caffeine can become. And sure enough, there is another screen and more buttons. The machine is telling me to place my cup on the drip tray and press Go.
In an exhausted flourish, I push the bright green Go button. The machine whirrs to life with clunks and spilling beans. The words “Your Drink Is Being Prepared” burst across the screen along with a little blue line that slowly progresses as, I imagine, my drink does.
“I knew you could do it,” Thornton says. I look back at him. He shifts the book under his other arm and lifts his hand in the air. Dear lord, he wants a high five. I whip my hand up and wave it easy-peasy in his general direction and feel, with perfect clarity, my fingers brush the side of his forearm as I lurch forward.
“Lack of caffeine,” I say, laughing too hard. I quickly turn back to the coffee machine before he can respond. I know me. Whatever comfort he’d give would just feel patronizing.
Finally, hot black coffee streams out of the machine and into my awaiting mug. I pull my mug from the drip tray and let the coffee within warm my hands. I inhale the smell and almost tear up. Standing there, holding a mug that’s half full of strong Sip of the Month coffee, something wonderful happens. A long-lost feeling swells from deep inside. Something I haven’t felt in a very long time.
Pride.
“Hey, Joan.” I look up. Thornton. “Hold up.” He pulls his mug from the drip tray and strides over. He hands me back my book.
“It’s good?” he asks.
“Won the Nobel,” I say.
“I’ll have to check it out.” Thornton and I stand in the main walkway. Holding our coffees. Quiet. “So, when does your onboarding start?”
“Thirty or so minutes?”
“I want to show you where you’re sitting,” he says, gesturing up a small flight of stairs in the back of the building. “Our team’s got an ideal setup. Out of the main area. Less noise. Less traffic. No one bothers us.” I shift The Golden Notebook to the other arm and settle in next to him as he glides through the main workspace of Bloom.
“Oh, good. You’re a fast walker,” I say, struggling to keep up. He immediately slows. I try to change the subject and make him focus on anything but me being slightly out of breath. “This whole open floor plan thing…” I trail off with a whipped arm around the now bustling main area.
Thornton shrugs.
“What?” I ask. Thornton’s shoulders lower and he leans in.
“I think they believe it’s conducive to collaboration.”
“But…” I lead.
“Without actual walls or offices, people have to express that they’re busy and don’t want to be disturbed with their bodies.” He stops, scans the main area. I look around. Huddled workers, headphones, hardened faces that communicate to keep walking. “Plus, without an office door to close—if you have someone who believes they have sole ownership and a right to someone else’s time?” Thornton flicks his gaze to a spindly man looming over a woman at her desk. Her entire demeanor screams that she is in the middle of something—ear buds are in, her eyes are fixed on the email she’s now unable to focus on—and yet he weeble-wobbles over her, completely oblivious. “Everyone is just as siloed and in their own little worlds, except the walls are…” He trails off, thinking.
“Invisible,” I finish.
“And ineffective.”
“Sounds like the bullpen back when I worked in newsrooms. But they relished being cutthroat,” I say.
“That’s right. Ria told me you used to be a journalist,” Thornton says. Used to be. It’s fine. Drink your coffee, Joan. Smell the coffee. Inhale the pride of that accomplishment and don’t let the fact that he put your journalism career firmly in your past spiral you back down into a bottomless pit of shame. “Can’t wait for you to meet the rest of the team.” My stomach drops. Thornton eyes my coffee. “How is it?” I take a sip.
“Delicious,” I say, resenting how good it is.
“Straight black coffee, huh?” Thornton asks.
“It’s all I could manage technologically and emotionally,” I say. He laughs. We climb the stairs, Thornton taking the steps two at a time.
“I don’t want to spill my coffee,” I say, lying as I move at a much slower pace. We both notice that my mug is half full—or medium full according to The Coffee Monolith. “I’m actually shocked more people don’t fall going up and down stairs.”
Oh, good. Yes, let’s elaborate on this hysterical train of thought.
“Like how most people get in car accidents five miles from their house.” Thornton looks at me.
I am quiet. “Oh. Oh! Okay … More people should fall going up and down stairs because it’s a thing people do all the time just like getting into car accidents right around their own houses. I get it.”
“There you go,” Thornton says, smiling. He holds up his hand, awaiting another high five. Okay. I’ve got it this time. I can do this. Since he is four steps further up the staircase than me I hurry up to meet him, my hand outstretched to meet his.
Everything slows down, my hand floating through the air in search of a celebratory high five that will never come. Instead, I find myself lunging up the stairs, my outstretched hand slapping a wooden stair with desperate exuberance. My other hand is no help, it’s full of coffee and impossibly giant books. Thornton reaches down to help me up.
“Nope—”
“You’ve got it,” Thornton finishes. He graciously steps away from the top of the stairs as I right myself. As I walk up the rest of the stairs, I’m certain the cold slap of my hand on that wooden stair will be my recurring nightmare in the coming weeks.
“I think we’ve both learned a valuable lesson here,” I say, as I reach the top of the stairs.
“And what’s that?” he says.
“That high fives should be left to the professionals.”
“Look at the elbow next time.”
“What?”
“The key to a perfect high five—look at the elbow.” It takes everything I have not to look at my own elbow.
The small loft space is bisected by beams and sloping ceilings. Str
ands of Christmas lights twinkle. There’s a bright yellow Wiffle ball bat in the corner of the room surrounded by a pile of neon-green Wiffle balls. Nerf bullets litter the ground, evidence of some long-ago battle. A set of Legos are scattered across a low table and what looks to be half of the Millennium Falcon. All that’s missing are a set of cubbies for my emergency set of clothes, should I have an accident, and a rug with the alphabet on it.
“I’m over in the corner and you’re here next to Hani,” Thornton says. Thornton leans down in front of who I’m assuming is Hani and waves his hand in front of her face. She jerks back and then laughs. She bolts upright, immediately pulled down by her headphones. A trill of giggles as she becomes tangled in her headphones and finally—
“Hani Khadra, this is Joan Dixon. The new junior copywriter,” Thornton says, setting his coffee on his desk. “Joan, meet the rest of our team.” Hani shoots her hand out and shakes mine.
“Boy, can we use some extra hands around here. Thornton’s been trying to get another copywriter for months and, well, you’re a sight for sore eyes.” Hani looks even younger than Thornton. She’s wearing a gray headscarf, an oversized jean jacket, and black skinny jeans with Air Jordans.
“Happy to be here,” I say.
“Happy to have you here!” Hani stands with her arms akimbo, open faced and smiling, her dark brown skin crinkling at the corners of her eyes.
“So, is this me?” I ask, pointing to a stark white desk next to Hani’s.
“Yep, your laptop is there, along with a monitor, wireless mouse if you need it, your first day folder, plus some Bloom swag. And feel free to bring in anything from home to decorate your desk,” Thornton says.
“Oh, I’ve made it a habit not to fill my desk with personal stuff. That way, when my last day comes, I can just leave and not, you know, pathetically walk through the office with a box filled with my now tragic knickknacks.” Thornton’s eyes flick from me to Hani. I look over at Hani’s desk and it’s overrun with action figures, strips of photos from various photo booths, stuffed animals, a bouquet of blue flags, each with a white star in the middle, a set of Nerf guns, a pair of Captain Marvel walkie-talkies, and countless items of swag from various movies. Her office chair has a hockey jersey over top of it, as well as a black hoodie strewn over that. “But, that’s just me.”
In the silence that follows—and it is a long one—I start and stop way too many apologies.
“Hani, you are young and filled with wonder, fill your desk with things that bring you gladness and pay no attention to the jaded monster.”
“I’ve been down a dark road, Hani, you wide-eyed beacon of light, please don’t let yourself be corrupted by the likes of me.”
“Hello, Hani, you earnest angel, I am your cautionary tale come to life. Save yourself!”
“Hani. I’m an asshole. Feel free to ignore me.”
“Welp, it’s great to have you,” Hani says.
“Thanks,” I say, stifling the urge to lunge into her for a long, apologetic hug.
“I don’t think we can do much until you’re onboarded. But why don’t you pull up a chair and I can at least walk you through some of the basics of what we do up here,” Thornton says. I roll my office chair over to his desk and watch as Thornton interacts with a computer in ways I never thought possible. Shortcuts, multiple windows, swiping away whole documents while simultaneously shifting his coffee mug to the other side of his desk and pulling his phone from his pocket and setting it gently on his desk, next to his wallet, sunglasses, and keys.
“I’m already terrified,” I say, clutching my coffee.
“Yes, good. Then my elaborate plan has worked,” he says, minimizing his music player and another window full of his legion of text messages. Thornton pulls up an interoffice messaging system, scrolls through a list of names, stops on Hani’s, and quickly types: Turn around.
I look from Thornton’s computer over to Hani’s back and wait for someone who’s mere inches away to read an electronic message that’s basically the equivalent of a friendly tap on the shoulder. Hani turns around in her chair, flipping her headphones up onto her forehead like a black-banded visor, the earphones fanning out as if they’re open car doors.
“Well, well, well, well—” she says in a low mysterious drawl sounding as if she’s just unmasked a murderer.
“I wanted to show Joan some examples of the kind of work she can expect to do. Can you pull up that—”
“The Holicray party email,” Hani finishes. Thornton nods solemnly. Hani whips off her headphones, unplugs her laptop, and scoots over to Thornton’s desk.
“Everything you know about being a copywriter is going to have very little to do with what that job actually looks like here at Bloom,” Thornton says, tapping away at Hani’s computer.
“It’s kinda like when I used to play Gin Rummy with my mom during summer vacation and then I played it again with a friend a few years back only to find out that none of the rules Mom taught me were real. She’d made the whole thing up,” Hani says.
“We generate most of the written content for press releases and marketing materials, and we wrote all of the copy on the Bloom website,” Thornton continues.
“You wrote everything on the website. That was before my time,” Hani says to Thornton.
“That all sounds pretty standard,” I say.
“Yeah, standard pretty much flew out the window right away. I spent my first weeks here writing a complete style guide for the website only to have Asher write back, ‘tl:dr,’” Thornton says.
“I don’t know what that means,” I say.
“Too long; didn’t read,” Hani says.
“Jesus,” I say. Thornton nods wearily.
“So, now we just jump in on everything from Instagram captions and tweets, to various and sundry shout-outs, and edit”—Thornton finally turns Hani’s computer so I can read the document—“Holicray emails.”
Asher Lyndon’s Holicray email is a solid six paragraphs of tight prose and zero punctuation. I manage to get through the first paragraph in which Asher waxes rhapsodic about the several holiday parties he’s unable to remember due to “too much raging” only to crawl through three more paragraphs where he goes on in way too much detail about “this one time in Ibiza” where “some wild shit happened yo.” By the time I stagger through to the final paragraph, the actual details of the Bloom holiday party are so muddled and arcane that I don’t know whether to RSVP or hose off.
“Who was this email being sent to?” I ask, pushing Hani’s computer away.
“The entire company, the board—” Thornton says.
“Everyone,” Hani adds, tapping away on her computer. She pushes her computer back to me.
“We got it down to this,” Thornton says. I hesitate, but am relieved to find that Thornton and Hani’s edited version of Asher’s Holicray email is just a series of informational bullet points and fun holiday GIFs.
“And he was okay with you—”
“No, not really,” Thornton says.
“Chris is the—” Hani scans the loft space furtively and continues in a whisper. “Chris is—” And in an apparent abundance of caution, Hani simply raises her index finger and mouths the words, “number one.” Then, with a wide smile, Hani scoots back over to her desk, puts on her headphones, and begins tapping away again.
“It can get awkward, but Chris looks to us as a final defense. It’s why he brought me in.”
“You knew Chris from before?”
Thornton nods. Something on Thornton’s screen catches his eye. A furrowed brow and then—
“I’ll let you get back to work,” I say. I stand.
“Let me know when you’re heading out to onboarding.”
I nod.
Hani and Thornton quickly settle into their morning routines. Hani takes a sip of an elaborate iced coffee drink that was clearly made here. Someday, I must unlock the magical mysteries that machine holds.
I roll my chair back over to my desk
and sit. The chair is comfortable. I situate the height and roll closer to my desk. My desk. It’s nice to have a desk again. More than nice. I sip my coffee. Black coffee and a desk. Now this is familiar. I take a deep breath. I take another sip.
The laptop is new. Newer than any computer I’ve worked on in recent years. The whole thing probably weighs only a couple of pounds. I don’t even know where to start with all that, so I push it to the side and open the first day folder instead.
I pull my phone from my pocket and catch myself trying to sneak a glance at the first day texts I’ve gotten from my friends, as if I’m back in school somehow and I shouldn’t have my phone out in class. I look back at Thornton.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Oh, yeah … I’m just checking the time,” I lie. I exit out of my texts and return to the home screen where the time stares back at me. So much for my alibi.
“What room are you guys in for onboarding?” Thornton asks. Hani takes off her headphones and is now following along. I check my schedule.
“Snoopy?”
“Okay, so first you look for the little red dog house,” Hani says. An expectant smile spreads across her face. She waits. Thornton and I laugh. She joins in, her laughter louder than both of ours put together. “JK, JK. It’s down the stairs, all the way across the main floor and then you’ll see another staircase? Snoopy is at the tippy top.”
“I’ll walk you over,” Thornton says, standing.
“Thank you,” I say.
“I couldn’t find it for months, TBH,” Hani says, putting on her headphones.
“Bring your laptop and that folder,” Thornton says, pointing to both. I grab both, making a mental note to Google “TBH” later on today.
As Thornton and I walk through the main area, I see Chris and Asher step out of the Scooby Doo conference room along with a host of important-looking adults. Without Thornton and Hani there to edit his long-winded pontificating, I can only imagine what Asher subjected them to. Thornton gestures to the staircase leading up to Snoopy. We climb the stairs in silence. I’m just about to go in when he raises his hand again. An arched eyebrow. He flicks his head toward his hand.
