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eighteen

Skylar

I’m sitting at a table in the corner of a restaurant across from my brother. Conversation has been easy. I’m catching him up on everything happening with my work, about my programs, and the last time I spoke to our parents, when his phone buzzes. He looks down at the phone and shakes his head.

“Everything okay?” I ask.

“Just Chase.”

“Oh yeah? What about Chase?” I ask nervously.

“Nothing. Just stuff between the two of us. Contract extension stuff. Nothing for you to worry about.”

“Yeah. Totally.” I look down at my plate and hear Ethan clear his throat. I look up and he’s staring at me. “What?”

“You know that I have your best interests at heart, right? That I would look out for you by whatever means that I could?”

My gaze to him softens, “Of course I do. That’s what big brothers do.”

“Good. Stay away from Chase.”

I fight the urge to get angry as I carefully set down my silverware.

“Ethan. You’re not my father. I am a grown adult and can make my own decisions.

I do not appreciate you telling me I should stay away from someone.

I can be friends with whoever I wish. And I can certainly date anyone of my choosing. You’ve got to stop repeating yourself.”

“I’m just looking out for you.”

“I appreciate that, but unless I ask you for your help with something, I don’t need you controlling my life. I just need you to be my big brother.”

“What part of your life am I controlling? I’m just looking out for you.”

“Just stop it. I’m a big girl, and I’ll do what I want.

I’ve been doing that for several years now.

Just because we’re living in the same city now, it doesn’t mean that changes.

Now, that’s the last time I will say anything about that to you.

If I want to be friends with someone, then I will.

If I want to date someone, then I will. End of story. ”

“Sky—.” Ethan starts, but I refuse to hear anymore, holding up my hand.

“With all due respect, and to not get up and leave, when you are, in fact, my ride tonight, and this food looks delicious. That’s the end of the conversation.”

The look on my brother’s face is one of pure shock as I pick up my utensils and cut into my steak. “This is cooked perfectly. How’s yours?”

“Um, yeah, it’s good,” he mumbles.

Work is killing me right now. I’m working longer days, and lacking the staff with adequate training to properly do my job, making my work that much extra.

While I am thankful to have my job, I also have been dreading going into work every day, not looking forward to everything that I have to do daily.

My boss is riding my ass, telling me he doesn’t expect me to do something, however, gets cross with me while asking me why something hasn’t been done.

There’s no winning.

And there’s only one of me. But the work calls for at least two more people.

We’ve had three people in total quit within the last week, and all their tasks have fallen on my shoulders.

I sit at my desk with my head in my hands, regulating my breathing after reading the latest email that was poorly written by my director.

Most days, I have nothing but respect for my boss.

He’s been in the industry for over forty years.

But sometimes, I wonder how he can tie his shoes.

Case in point, the email that I just received from him made no sense.

It was three paragraphs long, missing many words, full of misspellings, and punctuation errors.

I can understand what he’s asking of me, purely because I grew up playing detective with bits and pieces of information that I was given.

But this is the email of a high schooler at best.

He’s asking me to add another task to my already overflowing plate, and I have to be the good employee and say, ’ sure, whatever you say, boss ,’ even though I don’t have the bandwidth to figure out how I will tackle everything that needs to get done.

I stand up suddenly and walk over to the wall where a large whiteboard is. I have stuff on the board that needs to be there. Nothing can be erased. I leave my office and go from conference room to conference room until I find what I’m looking for.

I roll an even bigger whiteboard out of the last conference room on the floor and through the floor, into my office, with curious glances thrown in my direction as I pass. I ignore them all.

I write out the names of all the programs I am working with.

My workload has tripled in size. Under the program names, I add the staff manager or team leader in charge to refer questions.

I add in elements that are important to the programs, the costs, and the next deadlines.

After an hour, I take a step back and see the web of information in front of me.

It’s a lot. But I can manage it. Now that I have everything laid out in front of me.

I grab my phone from my desk.

Hey, I need a break from work. Lunch?

Can’t. I’ve got a few endorsement meetings. Waiting for one to start right now.

Bummer. But okay. Next time. Good luck with your meetings.

Dinner or drinks instead?

I’m likely going to have a long night here at the office. Sorry.

I wait for the dancing dots, but nothing comes. Nothing comes ten minutes later either. He must have started his meeting.

I place an order for delivery and get started on the first task at hand, setting up meetings to familiarize myself with the leads about these programs that I’ll be working with.

Luckily, three of them have slots open for today, which I slide into my calendar, and by the time my lunch arrives, the rest of my day is scheduled.

I may work late tonight, but I feel like I accomplished something in the grand scheme of things.

Hopefully, no more surprises will add more work to my already jam-packed schedule.

The day has gotten away from me. I had my meetings this afternoon and learned what I could from the leads. I’m sitting on the floor of my office, facing the whiteboard with files and my laptop surrounding me, when someone knocks on my window just beside my office door.

I look up, likely looking like a crazy person with a pen between my teeth, to see Chase standing in the doorway, holding two white plastic bags. The delicious smell of teriyaki filled the air.

He holds up the bags. “Have you eaten yet?”

Shaking my head and standing as he walks into my office, setting the bags on my messy desk, he turns to me.

“Sorry, I didn’t get back to your text earlier.

Back-to-back meetings kind of threw me for a loop.

Your office is extremely messy.” He looks around, noticing the balled up papers circling the wastebasket, the mountains of files in piles around the floor, and Post-Its lining the backside of my desk representing a Kandon table for my daily tasks.

“Work is crazy. What time is it?” I look out the window, noticing the floor beyond my office is dark.

“It’s a little after seven. Have you eaten? Are you hungry? I could go.”

“No, please stay. I could use a break, and no, I haven’t eaten yet tonight, not since lunch, but I barely ate any of that.” I point to the half-eaten sandwich from hours ago atop my desk.

Chase pulls the Styrofoam containers from the bags and opens them, handing me a fork.

“I didn’t think to bring plates or any of that.”

I take the fork and stick it into the container, then pull it to my mouth. “We don’t need plates. This works just fine.”

A few minutes pass while we eat in a comfortable silence together.

Chase walks over to the new whiteboard and looks at the lists with arrows, and likely things he doesn’t understand. He looks at the other whiteboard with a neater list of my standardized workload.

“What’s happening here? This looks like it’s made by a crazy person, and this one looks more scheduled.” He points to each board.

“That one is what I usually have to manage on a day-to-day basis. That one is new stuff that was added to my plate on top of the other one.”

“That looks like a lot of stuff.”

I step to the new whiteboard and begin pointing. “This is the program. These are the program leads that I now supervise, and these are the key metrics that need to be accounted for. And these are the next due dates that I need to pay attention to.”

“It’s not all first of the month, last of the month?” he asks, noticing the dates are all over the place.

“They should be, but until we get things ironed out, this is based on the pre-start dates of the specific programs. Each group has stuff that they need completed beforehand. I keep track of it.”

“Do you manage people or programs? I thought you managed programs.”

“It’s a mixture of both. It just depends on what group it is.”

He nods. “What time do you get here in the morning?”

“About seven or eight. Why?”

“You need to know when to call it quits for the day.”

“Well, I’m not an hourly staff member. I’m a salaried employee. There’s no real quitting time for me.”

“Exactly. That’s the problem. Know when to call it quits for the day, to return the next day to continue on with your work. It’s probably not all checklists and getting shit accomplished. Close up your office. Everything will still be here when you return tomorrow.”

“But it will be all I will think about when I go home. Might as well stay a few more hours.”

“No. I’ll take you out, so you’re not thinking about work.”

“Chase.”

“Skylar.” He pins me with a look.

I smile and give in to him. “Fine. What are we going to do?”