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She held out her hand, approaching me. “Corinne Gordon?”
I shook hands with her. “That’s me.”
“Good morning and welcome. I’m Barbara Riggs, Executive Secretary. I work right upstairs with the bosses.”
“Very nice to meet you,” I said.
“And, it’s very nice to meetyou,” replied Barbara. “There are some others starting today, but you’re the first to get here. You know, I’m always telling Mr. Bennett we need moregirlsin this place. Technology is such amalefield; this place is always full ofguys.Not that I really mind — some of them are pretty nice-looking.” She lowered her voice a bit. “But, don’t repeat that. It’s not really a professional kind of thing to say. Anyway, you’re not theonlywoman working here, but I’m glad to see one more just the same.”
I kept quiet and didn’t contradict her about technology being “a male field,” but I knew women in sciences and technology were getting to be more and more common. I assumed that Barbara’s remark was a generational thing. I just let it go as her own personal observation. What she’d said had made me feel a bit as if I were a trailblazer, though I knew I was just a small part of a trend.
The other part about the “pretty nice-looking” guys working here actually sounded intriguing, though I took Barbara’s cue and kept everything on a professional level. I answered her remark with, “I’m excited to be your ‘one more.’”
“Good!” she said. “And, since you’re in Customer Service, we’ll get to see more of each other once you’re settled in. I’ll be helping with some of your training, so we’ll get to know each other better.”
“That’s wonderful,” I said. I glanced over at the door to the Customer Service center. “Guess it’s time to go in there, huh?”
“Don’t be nervous. Everyone’s very nice, and they’ll be glad to see you. We’ll wait a couple of minutes for the other new interns to get here. Then, we’ll introduce you around.”
After a few more minutes, the other newcomers appeared and Barbara led us into our new workplace. I already liked her, which put me at ease. She had a quality about her that I’d describe as somewhat maternal. There seemed to be something about her that made me think she liked to take care of people.
It intrigued me a bit that Elijah Bennett, the co-owner of the company, would want a secretary like her, instead of the stereotypical Executive Secretary of the big boss. After meeting Ben, the gym owner and personal trainer, I thought his client would be the kind of executive who’d have some slim, pretty young thing with long legs and curves in all the right places sitting behind his front desk.Who was this person, and what would he really turn out to be like? I wondered.
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I spent my first day, with coaching from Barbara, learning the ropes of dealing with customers’ problems both on phone calls and online chats. It occurred to me that this was the kind of job that a lot of companies liked to outsource and contract out, sometimes to other countries.
I thought back over some of the tech support calls that I’d had to make about my phone and my computer and how many people accents and dialects that were distinctly foreign. It made me think I should count myself lucky that Bennett Info Tech kept this part of its business in-house. If it weren’t for that, I might still be in Youngstown looking for new opportunities.
The Bennett-Jacobs call and chat center was a comfortable place. We had our own cubicles with well-upholstered chairs to sit in and modern headsets to use while talking to clients. It was brightly lit and done in soothing colors.
I thought about the psychology behind it and guessed that the place must have been designed to minimize workers’ stress in situations where callers might be upset and things could get stressful. I wondered if Elijah Bennett himself had thought to do it this way, or if some consultant had recommended it to him. Whatever the case might be, it was another thing that made me believe I’d come to the right place.
My cubicle was between two guys who had been there for a while. To one side of me was Brett, who was in his mid-to-late twenties. He had dark curly hair, a goatee, and glasses with round lenses; for some reason I thought he looked as if he should be in some dimly-lit cafe reading poetry while someone played a bongo drum. To the other side of me was Jerome, a guy that I took to be perhaps ten years older than Brett. He had thinning hair and a thin beard and was just starting to get a little thick in the middle.
Barbara was right about them; they were helpful and didn’t seem to be very condescending towards the girl sitting between them. If anything, they acted as if they were glad to have one more person on board to take some of the heat of customer calls off them.
There was, however, one thing that I was a little curious about. Towards the end of my shift I wheeled my chair back towards the outside of my cubicle and leaned over into Brett’s space. “Um…hey, Brett?” I called.
He spun his chair around a few degrees and leaned back towards me. “Yeah, Corinne? What’s up?”
“I was just wondering… How long is it, usually, before you get to meet the bosses? The owners? Do they ever come down here and talk to people?”
“Frankly,” said Brett, “I don’t remember the last time I ever saw Elijah Bennett or Leo Jacobs. They mostly stay up on the floor above us. They even have their own elevator. It’ll probably be a while before you see them.”
“Some people here say they’veneverseen them, which is an exaggeration. Sooner or later, you’ll catch sight of them,” said a voice from the other side of me. I looked over to see Jerome leaning out of his own cubicle.
“Some people in this office have a little joke that Elijah and Leo are a myth, except every week Elijah’s signature is on the paychecks to remind us that he’s not like Bigfoot or something; he actually exists. Like I said, exaggeration. Down here, we deal mostly with HR. As long as the paycheck clears, I see no reason to go looking for them.”
I gave a little chuckle and wheeled my chair back to my computer, pondering what the guys had told me.A boss who was mostly just a name on a paycheck? Two guys who come and go on their own elevator and hardly ever see the people who work for them?“Hmm…” I mumbled. It got me wondering just how long Elijah Bennett and Leo Jacobs would remain a tantalizing mystery.
CHAPTER9
Elijah. Wednesday
It was work as usual when Barbara called me. “Leo is on his way in.”
“Fine,” I said.