The Checklist

by Addie Woolridge

  “Thank you. I don’t mean to sound abrupt, but we have a lot to do here, and I need to have a chat with Tim, so if you will excuse me. Please, make yourself comfortable,” Dylan said, gesturing toward the sole metal chair by the door, which Taylor promptly ignored, turning instead to wander along the gift-bag tables.

  Hauling as quickly as she could through the door Tim had slipped behind, she called out, “May I have a moment?”

  Tim jumped two inches off the ground, looking left and right, before realizing the voice was coming from directly behind him. Turning, he adopted a hangdog expression. “I know what you are going to say.”

  “Do you? Let’s hear it,” Dylan said, fighting the urge to cross her arms and scowl. It was too close to Bernice, and she wasn’t ready to turn into her mother this early in the day.

  “You are going to tell me we need to work on addressing the deeper employee concerns, let the staff committee handle everything, and that this is not the two-hour warehouse task you were promised.”

  He’s oddly spot on, Dylan thought. Taking a slow sip of coffee to gather her composure, she smoothed the front pleat of her wide-legged slacks before speaking. “If you knew this lecture was coming, why do this?”

  “Because I know you are going to make me do those things, and frankly, I don’t mind doing them.” Tim added the second clause hastily before continuing, “But I wanted to try things my way first.”

  “I thought we came to an understanding about being a CEO your way and next steps during what is a volatile time for everyone.” Tim eyed the floor, giving Dylan room to build up steam. “You recognize that you are putting me in a tight spot here. I mean, the press? Again?”

  “Don’t worry; she won’t submit the story until tomorrow morning,” Tim interjected, the guilt still scrawled on his face. “It’ll probably go in the Sunday edition.”

  Tim’s eyes stayed fixed on the shiny concrete, his shoulders slumping. His self-reproach pressed on Dylan’s anger, thawing her slightly. Sighing, she filled the expanding silence. “I need you to sit here and send a memo to the staff regarding our next steps from the retreat while I sort this out. I sent you a draft to review last night, so it shouldn’t take long. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  “Now, head to the security desk up front and get started.” Dylan was surprised by the softness in her tone, given how much she still needed to do for Kaplan. As soon as Tim began walking toward the door, Dylan felt the bile in her stomach make its way toward her throat, forcing her to take another deep breath. It was unlikely Jared would view a warehouse intervention as a good reason for her to be tardy with his outlandish request.

  “You are a smart girl. You can fix this.” She repeated her new mantra under her breath. Taking out her phone, she clenched her teeth. She hated to do this, but she had to tell Mike that he would be taking the meeting with Steve alone. Ditto for dinner. There was simply no way she would be out of this warehouse anytime before six thirty today. A least she’d managed to set up the meeting before becoming a total flake. And really, helping Mike get a meeting was more important than her being there anyway. When it came down to it, it wasn’t like he needed her to hold his hand through the meeting.

  She’d just finished proofreading the world’s most insufficient apology text when a voice startled her. “Hey, Dylan, got a second?”

  Tearing her attention away from the phone, she looked up to see Lois jogging toward her, a gaggle of people walking a few paces behind her. As Lois introduced her to the individuals in charge of certificates, mugs, and bag stuffing, Dylan’s eyes began to cross from exhaustion. She listened to the heads of each component, trying to understand where they were in the timeline and what challenges they were facing. While each person explained their needs, she did her best to get a list going. Eventually, she gave up thinking about anything other than the train wreck in front of her and got down to the brass tacks of managing multiple assembly lines.

  She was busy orchestrating a cleanup of the boxed dinners the gift-bag-packing crew had demolished when Tim appeared by her side, a cheeky look on his face. In one hand he had a sandwich box and in the other a gift bag. Glancing down at her watch, Dylan winced; it was already past ten thirty at night.

  “Tim, I know you said the deadline was twelve midnight, but there is still an astronomical amount of packing to be done, not to mention delivery.”

  “I have it under control. This is for you,” he said, extending the package and the boxed dinner toward her.

  As if reminding her she was running exclusively on coffee and optimism, her stomach rumbled. It was so aggressive that Tim looked over his shoulder before recognizing the sound came from her. “You should take this and head home. Thank you for your help today.”

  “Who is going to make sure this all gets quality checked, packed, and delivered?” Dylan asked, startled by the abrupt end of her tenure as floor manager.

  “Me. You have done way more than your fair share.” Tim shook the gift bag at her.

  “Well, thank you,” Dylan said, processing the return of her time. Taking the bag and to-go box, she added, “And thank you for making sure I received something to eat.”

  Glancing over at her temporary office, she realized that if she hurried, she could theoretically get the outlines to Jared before midnight. “You sure you don’t need anything more?”

  “Yup. Get a move on.”

  She wasn’t going to look a deadline-saving horse in the mouth. “Thanks, Tim. See you tomorrow.”

  With that she began cramming things into her purse with a sort of haphazard inattention that made her cringe, then dashed out of the warehouse. After unlocking the car, she threw the gift bag into the passenger seat, only marginally aware of the contents tumbling out as she rushed to ship the documents off to Jared under the wire.

  “Dylan, you’re in the paper!” Her father burst into her room clutching an iPad, the font blown up extra large so he wouldn’t need his glasses.

  Searching through the fog of sleep deprivation, she tried to discern if this was part of some incoherent dream she was having or if her father was actually making his way toward her. The angles of Henry’s clean-shaven face were dramatically lit, like he was telling a story around a campfire with a flashlight, not bursting into her room shouting nonsense with a tablet.

  “I mean, it isn’t your name—oh! Sorry, Milo.” Her father stopped talking as he tripped over the gargantuan dog at the foot of her bed. Milo grunted in protest, the scrape of his paws on the wood floor pulling Dylan into reality.

  “Uh-huh. Dad, it’s early.”

  “It’s five fifteen. This woman says something about Technocore employee bags and describes you,” Henry said, speaking at unreasonable decibels. Reaching out, her father grabbed her foot and shook her leg, forcing Dylan to roll over and open one eye. Henry was real and furiously waving his tablet at her.

  “I don’t—”

  “Here.” Henry thrust the device at her with zeal, the glow blinding her temporarily. “I need to find the light,” he mumbled to himself, relinquishing her foot. As her eyes adjusted, Dylan could hear her father’s socked feet shuffle around the room, searching for the switch. “Damn it, Milo. Move.”

  She was just about to tell him the switch was over by the door when the story caught her eye:

  On Thursday morning, the Examiner received an exclusive invitation to observe the underpinnings of an employee-appreciation extravaganza arranged by none other than Technocore’s embattled CEO, Tim Gunderson. Our reporter arrived at an isolated West Seattle warehouse that Gunderson rented for the day in order to surprise his staff with items he termed “personalized, bomb-ass swag.” Trailed closely by a consultant doing damage control, Gunderson walked through the massive operation of over 35 freelance seamstresses, engravers, organization professionals, plaque makers, and swag artists, all of whom had been commissioned to create more than 2,500 employee “thank-you bags” in under 12 hours.

  “This wasn’t suppose
d to come out until Sunday,” Dylan grumbled, the sleep beginning to lift from her brain. Somewhere in her secondary consciousness, she could hear her father stumbling around the room looking for a light switch and mumbling encouraging things about her not being named explicitly.

  Gunderson, who’s been in the news multiple times for a series of mishaps, wanted to show everyone he’d turned over a new leaf. However, evidence of the improved foliage was scant on the ground.

  As Gunderson ignored warnings from his consultant, the freelancers became increasingly irritated by his whims and the unexpected long hours. “It’s certainly something we are concerned about,” said Susan Moore, president of the freelancers’ union. “It is typical of these tech guys to assume that a freelancer is there to be worked to the bone.” When asked if there could be legal repercussions for Gunderson and Technocore, Moore replied, “I don’t have all the facts yet. But yes, we are concerned, and we will be investigating the conditions Mr. Gunderson asked his freelancers to work under.”

  Given the stakes, why Gunderson, often referred to as Gunderpants on employee social media accounts, dismissed the good advice of his consultant remains a mystery to the Examiner. At one point, the consultant could be seen crawling around the warehouse floor arranging sewing machine cables and begging the CEO to do something more meaningful for employees, like changes to the break room and parking facilities, as a way of saying thank you.

  “I wasn’t crawling on the floor,” Dylan said as the lights flicked on. Henry let out a triumphant squawk before returning to the bed and peering over her shoulder. Looking up at her father, Dylan asked, “Does this get any better?”

  Henry shrugged in a way that reminded Dylan of her mother and said, “Honestly? Not really.”

  “I need coffee,” Dylan said.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  This is not how I envisioned my Friday, Dylan thought as she waited for the light to change. While she waited, she eyed the spilled contents of the staff-appreciation bag still lying on the passenger-side floor. She was cold and tired. The embroidered fleece jacket stared back at her, looking comfortable. It was so early; she could sneak into the office and take it off before anyone saw her in personalized synthetic fabric. As she reached over to grab the jacket, her breath caught in her throat. There, in lovely script italics, was the wrong name.

  Or, rather, the right first name but a very wrong last name. Forcing her freak-out aside, she wondered if anyone at Technocore was named Dylan Chavez. Maybe Tim didn’t know her last name?

  Dread squeezed at her insides, making her skin prickle with sweat. Tim knew her name. There was no Dylan Chavez. There was, however, a Rebecca Chavez in what was left of the front-end development team. The file Tim had sent over wasn’t just out of order; it was wrong.

  She made it to the office in record time. Slamming her car door with her hip, she took a sip of the hot coffee her father had prepared, grateful for his unexpected thoughtful gesture and relieved to find it wasn’t a reheat of Bernice’s leftovers from the evening before. Not for the first time, Dylan marveled at her parents’ capacity to show up for her on occasion, even though they had literally no idea what she did all day. Her father making fresh coffee was so sweet and startling that Dylan had almost hugged him. In fact, she would have if she hadn’t been in such a hurry. Surprising Henry with a hug could mean a substantial time delay, which was not in the cards. Dylan reasoned that later she would give him a bear hug and listen to whatever random joke he wanted to tell. Right now, she had bigger problems.

  Rocketing toward her office, she thought through all the possible scenarios for the day. Jared might not even see the article until later in the afternoon. After all, reading through all her half-finished documents would take him forever. Dylan had almost talked herself out of a panic when a stuffed gift bag, strategically placed on a chair in someone’s cubicle, caught her eye. The expensive fleece glared back at her, taunting her with Steve Chou. Running back around to the front of the cubicle, Dylan yelped. This was Richard Chou’s desk.

  Horrified, she two-stepped her way to her office, pinning the phone between her shoulder and ear as she opened her computer.

  “Tim, it’s Dylan. If you get this, call me back. It’s an emergency. There’s a problem with the gift bags. I’ll try to pick them up before the rest of the staff gets here. Okay. Bye.”

  Punching the red hang-up button, she tossed her phone on a stack of papers and dropped her head into her hands. There was a slight chance she could catch a few of the bags before the 7:00 a.m. shuttle buses arrived, but there was no way she could cover four floors of office space in twenty minutes. Not even if she took off her heels and ran. Dylan reached for her coffee, wondering if there was any way she could clear the early arrivals’ desks, then come back for the other staff who came in later. Just as she started to work out the details, her desk phone rang, causing her to jump.

  For a second, she hoped it was Tim calling to say he had magically solved the problem and that Steve Chou was a fluke, but her caller ID said otherwise. Dylan almost laughed. Yesterday morning, Nicolas had been high on her list of concerns. Now he would just have to keep waiting.

  By the time the voice mail notification flashed, Dylan was committed to trying to grab as many bags off the desks as she could. Or at least as many bags as she could without running through the halls and raising suspicion. Dylan envisioned herself looking stealthy as she wandered past desks, casually sipping her coffee and snatching bags while waving good morning to her coworkers. That could work. She would have to hide them near Tim’s office. No way could she fit all those bags in her little room.

  Springing out of her chair, she made a beeline for the door, throwing it open rather recklessly for someone about to try to steal a warehouse full of goodies. Dylan squeaked, jumping two feet out of her skin. Deep was frozen mid–knocking motion, also startled by the sudden opening of the door. Clutching the stitch in her chest, Dylan blurted, “Thank God you two are here. I need your help.”

  “Of course you do. What is it you need today?” Deep said, crossing her arms and leveling an intimidating stare at her.

  Dylan paused, trying to sort out exactly what was happening. One minute she had been planning to commandeer two thousand goody bags, and now one very angry friend was strolling into her office, agitation radiating off her like perfume.

  “I’m sorry. That was rude.” Dylan prodded in one direction, searching Deep’s face for a hint. “I was concerned about the bags on everyone’s desk and . . .”

  Deep rolled her eyes, then glanced over her shoulder at Brandt, who was lurking in the doorway, looking uncomfortably between the two of them. With a short jerk of her head, Deep motioned for him to enter the room and close the door.

  Dylan drew in a sharp breath as he turned back around to look at her, hurt written on his face. It was like watching a puppy get kicked. Worse, he had on his name-mismatched jacket. Guess she wouldn’t be stealing that one.

  “Well?” Deep asked, drawing her back into the room.

  Dylan stared back, hoping her face didn’t look as blank as her memory felt. She suddenly remembered the abrupt end to her day with Tim. “Shit. Did Tim not approve your expense check? I sent him an email, but I forgot to follow up with a conversation.”

  Brandt started. “No. He didn’t do that, but it’s okay. I’m sure you were—”

  “You don’t remember?” Deep burst. She hadn’t shouted, but the words carried the same level of intensity. “Lunch. Two days ago? You just disappeared.”

  Dylan blinked in surprise. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry.” Gesturing to Brandt’s jacket, she added, “I was under so much pressure with Kaplan I went out to get coffee and ended up working until three thirty in the morning. Then yesterday Tim went on the lousy rampage you are wearing, and I just blanked.”

  “You blanked for two days?” Deep said, the tilt of her head changing with her skepticism.

  “I did. I’m sorry.” The moment the response tumbled out
of her, it felt empty. Glancing over at Brandt, who was busy investigating the carpet, Dylan searched for something more to say that would buy her some forgiveness.

  “We thought you were hurt,” Brandt said, looking up suddenly.

  “We thought you had gone out for coffee and were kidnapped or something,” Deep said, uncrossing her arms and pointing at Dylan. “We called you like fifty times. Instead you were out here sipping lattes and letting Tim make a fool of our pointless staff-appreciation group.” She exhaled loudly and retreated toward the door. Reaching for the handle, she added, “Look. I get it. You are a consultant on a sinking ship. If you don’t want to get to know us, fine. Just be a big girl and say so.”

  Dylan felt her mouth go numb. She wanted to say something, but whatever it was didn’t come out, and Deep didn’t wait for it. She strolled out the door without glancing over her shoulder.

  “Deep acts tough, but she isn’t. Her feelings are just hurt. She was really excited about her game-night idea. Don’t worry. She’ll get past it.” Brandt shrugged, moving toward the door. “I know you didn’t mean to forget. I’m glad you’re okay.”

  He slid through the door and quietly shut it behind him, as if he had known that Dylan wouldn’t have a response for him either.

  It felt like someone had placed an overweight suitcase on her chest, forcing Dylan to lean against the edge of her desk and take deep breaths. For a moment, she stood there looking at her closed door, trying to process everything. Of course she hadn’t skipped lunch intentionally. She would never choose to treat a friend that way. The whole thing seemed like an overreaction. A small voice in the back of her head said something about how waiting two days to apologize was rude, but Dylan ignored the voice when her phone chimed, indicating that she had received yet another email. She would have to find a way to make it up to the pair of them later. Possibly much later, given the dumpster fire outside her door.

  Coming around her desk, Dylan was surprised to see the promised staff email from Tim in her inbox. Willing herself to unclench her fist, she perused the Big Updates subject line. A small corner of her heart hoped his big-updates email would include an apology for the jackets. Or if not an apology, she thought, maybe a promise to fix them, along with everything else in the company.