Two: Lunch time

<p>A door banged, alerting me that someone was coming.<br/><br/>Eleanor, my team leader, sneezed on her way back into our bullpen office area. The office area was separated from the more public reception, waiting and interview rooms. She had just finished a meeting with a client. The banging door was the loose door of an interview room.<br/><br/>I alt + tabbed to switch windows on my computer monitor so that she couldn't see what I had been up to. Instead, I finished typing up my report and looked at my list of clients. <br/><br/>I was a good worker, I was. Just doing my job. Not messing around at all. I loved my clients. My clients loved me. I did good work for them. My clients were very loyal and not the everyday mediocre type that my coworkers dealt with. Nobody would know that had my clients been more ordinary, I would find the job meaningless and monotonous. I'd be bored out of my mind.<br/><br/>One client was deaf. I had learnt sign language specifically for him. His business involved the challenge of communication difficulties and other problems that were unique to people with hearing impairments. Helping this client was very fulfilling when we weren't having hiccups in our communication.<br/><br/>Another client was working in a very niche market. We had to brainstorm all sorts of ideas together. During consultations, we would often end up being shushed by any of my colleagues using a neighbouring interview room because of how loud we got in our excitement while whipping up a creative storm. Our ideas often challenged my technical and practical skills but that made things fun. Otherwise I'd be looking for trouble on the internet to relieve my boredom, and I wasn't meant to be doing things like that at work just in case I made a mistake and my IP address was traced back to the office. I might be good but I wasn't infallible.<br/><br/>Then there was the client that didn't get along with me and didn't exactly like me. We always had arguments but he had to admit that I always delivered on demand. We'd gotten to the point in our working relationship now that our arguments had no hard feelings. The end of every project made us both sigh with relief at the break we would have from each other. Although I'd tried to pass him on to someone else multiple times, he insisted on staying with me so that he wouldn't have to explain everything from scratch. Apparently he enjoyed the arguing because no one else would bluntly call him out on his impossible bullheadedness in the same way I did. I didn't get it but he was happy, so Eleanor thanked me for keeping him on my list and out of everyone else's hair. Go figure.<br/><br/>There were others but these were the clients that stood out to me the most.<br/><br/>"Jean," Katja came over and rapped on my cubicle partition. "It's lunch time. Come and eat with us or knowing you, you'll skip lunch again and then the whole office will have to listen to your tummy rumbling the rest of the afternoon."<br/><br/>Katja was probably the person I had the closest relationship with besides Eleanor. Eleanor was more like a mother hen. Katja was my bridge into the social side of work. Without her, I wouldn't interact or make as much of an effort to get along better with my coworkers.<br/><br/>"Alright. Coming."<br/><br/>I saved my document and followed her to the lunchroom where a myriad of smells wafted through the air. Today, Boss had somehow found the time to get away and have lunch with our team. The other teams tended to go out for lunch rather than eat in the office. My team usually hogged the lunchroom and shared home cooked meals. That was Eleanor and Katja's influence.<br/><br/>I could smell the spicy scent of an intense green curry in the air.<br/><br/>"Two opposing sides are always listening but never able to see each other. What are they?" Priscilla read the daily quiz from the newspaper that the whole lunchroom joined in to solve every day.<br/><br/>"Ears," I called, pulling my lunch out from my lunch bag.<br/><br/>"That was easy," Maurie, the only male in our female team, muttered. Many of the other teams mostly consisted of males. The poor man had somehow drawn the short straw in being allocated to our team when he joined the company. Not that he seemed to mind it much.<br/><br/>"The city's Old Train Track Marathon is coming up in a few months," Katja told me, while she made her salad and shredded a cooked chicken breast into it. "Do you want to help me train for it again?"<br/><br/>"Sure," I shrugged, sticking the leftover beef and cauliflower lasagne Mum had made into the microwave. "Why not?"<br/><br/>"One leg sat on two legs who sat on three legs while four legs looked on," Priscilla read. "What is the picture of?"<br/><br/>"Why don't you join the marathon with me?" Katja asked. "This marathon's registration is free and there's a first prize trip for two to Wayfarer Island."<br/><br/>"When is it?" <br/><br/>I found a seat and settled down to finish waiting for my lunch to warm up. Katja sat across from me.<br/><br/>"Why's the quiz today so full of riddles?" grumbled Maurie. "Can't they ask us some ordinary general knowledge questions?"<br/><br/>"I think I've heard this one before somewhere," someone on the other end of the long table muttered. "Isn't it the one where a man sits on a three legged stool with a leg of ham while his dog looks on?"<br/><br/>"Third of June," Katja said, ignoring the quiz.<br/><br/>"Bingo," Priscilla said, pointing an index finger in the air at the person who had answered the quiz question correctly. Not Katja who was talking to me.<br/><br/>"Third of June? Nah. No can do," I waved a hand at Katja. "I've got something on that day."<br/><br/>I didn't, but I didn't want to tell Katja that I just plain wasn't interested in her neverending training for different marathons and sporting events. The third of June was just another day to me but there was no way I was actually going to join in the race. I wasn't competitive.<br/><br/>I was a homebody. When I was free, I just wanted to stay home and mess around with or on my computers. The only reason why I helped out or joined in with her training was that the running and sports helped me destress. Oh. And prepare me for the eventuality or possibility of being tracked down as a criminal in case anyone ever discovered I was the internet breaking culprit who had cost our economy billions. I'd need to be fit enough to do a lot of running if anyone pointed their finger in my direction. I'd been saving up cash in a tin at home just in case I had to go off the grid at short notice.<br/></p>