Out of Touch

by Leia Howard

  “Agreed. Should we invite Lowell onto the call now?”

  “Yes. Give me a moment to log him in.” I grab my tablet and pull up the video conferencing app. A portable speaker mic was on the table beside us, but everything was controlled through my central control unit. I turned on the mic and connected it to the Bluetooth, then dialed in the conference codes. It was set for audio only.

  “Liaison Lowell. Can you hear us?”

  “Yes, I can hear you just fine.”

  “Great, sorry for the delay bringing you in the meeting. Sheriff Helki is here with me. What can we help you with?”

  “Gray, Helki and I wanted to let you know about some personnel changes. I’ll still be the Psycept liaison, but my focus will be Civilian Support Services. I’ll also be traveling and interacting more with Psycept communities on other conservatorships. With this, I’ll no longer report to Helki, rather, directly to Chief Yanaba. I’ll have more contact with the Psycept Council and the civilian Psycept case workers. In my place, Helki is promoting both Sully and Tamez to detective sergeants and they’ll co-lead the Psycept Police unit.

  “Now, these moves won’t take place until after next month’s SWACon Police conference. I’m staying with the police unit for a couple of weeks to help with the transition. Mark is staying as their executive administrative assistant. Because I’ll be dealing more with travel, meetings, reports, and community relations, I need a more dedicated assistant. I know you’re stretched almost to capacity, but do you think your agency can take me on as a full-time client? If not, I can hire an executive assistant. I would prefer it to be your agency, though.”

  That’s a lot of information to absorb. I’m happy Liaison Lowell was stepping back. Handling all the Psycept cases, civilian or police, and direct supervision of the Psycept Police unit was a huge workload. Happily, Sheriff Helki realized this and was promoting two people to share the responsibility of the police unit. I’m also thrilled for Sully’s deserved promotion. He’d only been a detective for two years and already moving up to detective sergeant. I guess being the one with the highest escort tallies and training half the officers on-the-job worked well for him. Plus Tamez’ promotion. It was fun to work with her when Sully was out, she’s as efficient as I am. I’m also proud that Lowell wanted to stay with me.

  “Congratulations to all involved. I’ll keep the knowledge to myself and let you two disseminate it. Just inform me when you make it widely known, so I can send out obnoxious congratulatory messages. As for staying with me, can you give me a week to let you know? I need to talk to my team first.”

  “Gray, that is more than okay. Just let me know at the end of next week. I look forward to continuing to work with you, at least for the next few weeks. I’m going to sign off now.”

  “Goodbye, Lowell. Thanks for joining our meeting,” Sheriff Helki said.

  After the call ended, I began to kick Sheriff Helki out of the room. “Well, this was a productive meeting. Thank you for the presentation feedback. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon at the hospital. Here’s a bag for disposal. Please don’t forget to take the pitcher and cup out with you. You can remove your PPE in the main office bathroom and just leave the bag outside the bathroom door. Can you see yourself out? Our staff meeting starts in one minute and I must be going,” I say all of this while escorting Sheriff Helki out my office door and down the hallway.

  “Breathe, Gray. Yes, that’s fine. I’ll say goodbye now and see you tomorrow.”

  The occupants of the conference room were visible through the opened panel. Soon Yee, Rhea, and Dani all smiled and waved, then laughed as I practically flung Sheriff Helki into the bathroom.

  “All right, I’m here. Sorry for the delay. Shall we begin?”

  “Yes. I sent out our weekly stats just before the meeting. As everyone can see…” Dani replied. She detailed our billable hours, revenue, expenses, overhead, and net income. Soon Yee then Rhea provided current client information. Soon Yee received notice that Ms. Spenser’s children will not be retaining our services. They wish for a full-time secretary working from their office. While we’re sad to see the client go, Soon Yee is happy to have a little more capacity available. After the existing client update, Dani let us know about the new and possible client pipeline. I encourage the employees to run the weekly meetings and this concludes their portion. Special topics are more my purview, which reminds me.

  “Thank you all for the updates. Wonderful job, as always. Because of the excellent work, we’re running at full capacity, soon to be exceeding it. As such, I’m going to bring a new employee on. Dani, as our most recent hire, you get first dibs if you want to transition to a full-time assistant. This will mean we need to hire an office manager. If you wish to stay our office manager, then we’ll need to hire a full-time assistant. I don’t need an answer today but would appreciate one by Tuesday. As your annual review is upcoming, I’ll send you two formal offers, so you have something concrete to refer to. One will be for change in position, one for staying in the current position.

  “In either case, we need to make room for another assistant. Soon Yee and Rhea, I’m going to have both offices reworked to accommodate two cubicles each. You can decide where you want to go. The empty fourth cubicle, for now, will be used as additional space for client video conferences as well as an area for us to film promos to increase business. Again, your responses by Tuesday, please. If you have concerns you wish to address individually, you can contact me or send a meeting request. Thank you and have a great rest of your afternoon.”

  After dropping those bombshells, I return to my office. I have at least three working hours left in my day, and I can no longer afford to waste them on Reddit. Oh, what a glamourous life.

  At least the afternoon is productive. Pictures of the client conference set up in Toronto received and cleared. Sheriff Helki’s report set with the agreed to modifications, the only piece missing is this current month. I review Dani’s letters of offer and send them to her. Cool, I’m caught up with everything today. Home, and my comedy show, beckons.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Friday has arrived, finally. I’m not so thrilled about my consultation this afternoon, but I’ve plenty of time to not think about it between now and then. Avoidance, a valid life choice and one I endorse.

  Toronto client meeting proceeding without issue; assistant work-check. After looking over some client contracts and proposals, I sent them back to Dani with notes; client work-double check. I’m caught up with employee management as well. Dani has her letters of offer to consider. No one in the office contacted me after our meeting yesterday. I’m sure they will want to speak with me after a weekend of contemplation. Araceli, the renovation specialist and Dani’s girlfriend, will stop by tomorrow to go over the rooms and come up with proposed designs. I’ll present them at Thursday’s meeting for a vote.

  For now, I could be responsible and get started on projects for next week or offer to help Soon Yee or Rhea with their work. Instead, I’ll use this time to consider other matters.

  If we retain Liaison Lowell as a client with an increased workload, then I’ll probably be the one to work with him. His job is Psycept focused, and I’m the only Psycept on staff. Soon Yee may be able to work with him as she has some experience with Kyle. But, she attends our Psycept Council meetings even less often than I do, she and Zhengli use that time to have mother-daughter outings instead. She’ll need some time to learn the details as I currently handle his account, and it seems that Lowell will hit the ground running. I’ve no doubt Soon Yee can learn to assist Liaison Lowell, but her workload is heavy, even considering the client termination. It’ll be difficult to hire a new assistant and train them, shift her workload, then train Soon Yee in the four-week timeframe Liaison Lowell indicated.

  So, I’ll keep Lowell and the additional work. I’ll also continue to assist Sheriff Helki, and I may need to help the Psycept Police unit. Mark will stay, but he’ll have both Sully and Sgt. Tamez to assist and may
reach out to me for certain tasks. I’d normally have the capacity to do all of this, if not for a new short-term client that I’m taking on at the end of next month. A police lieutenant in Auraria of the Great Basin Conservatorship reached out to me and asked for help with her Psycept division. I’ll do essentially the same work as I do for Liaison Lowell. So, my original plan was to hire a new assistant, shift work between Soon Yee, Rhea, and the new person including some of my regular clients, then I can accommodate Auraria as a new client. With Liaison Lowell’s workload increasing and the amount of work a new client always needs, I’ll need to reassign all my regular clients. The newly hired assistant will have a full workload from the start, and we’ll have no capacity for new clients. Ugh. I send a quick instant message.

  Dani, do you have a sec? Budget stuff.

  Gimme 5. Wrapping up a sales call.

  Great, thanks. Appreciate it.

  I own the office trailer, so the office supplies, community contributions for four employees, extra utilities, and salaries are the only monthly business expenses. I’ll be taking on the one-time expense of the renovation and new office equipment for the new employee, but I budgeted for that. Our system network is already well established and able to absorb new employees readily. I planned to get new equipment for everyone but may need to reconsider after speaking with Dani.

  Ok, I’m ready.

  Cool, can you gear up and come to my office? Also, ignore the odor. I’ll deal with it Saturday.

  You suck. Be there in a jiff.

  I rarely ask anyone to come into my office because of the ordeal for them. Dani and I will be discussing some sensitive matters and neither her desk nor the conference room are as private as I like. For the rare employee visits in my office, I supply Soon Yee, Rhea, and Dani each a pair of large coveralls to wear over their clothes. I also have disposable caps, booties, masks, and gloves of various sizes available for use. I only have one rarely used pack of large, disposable coveralls like I made Sheriff Helki wear.

  “Just a sec,” I yell to the knock at my door as I pull on my gloves. I opened the door to Dani wearing her bright pink coveralls, her eyes smiling over the mask. It might seem overkill to have visitors covered in such a fashion, but my office is my space. I eschew gloves and perform my readings here. To safeguard against a visitor essentially contaminating my space, everyone gears up.

  She sat down in the draped visitor’s chair. “What’s up?”

  “I already budgeted for the third assistant, thus yesterday’s announcement. But, I just found out about increased workload of some existing clients. And, I haven’t mentioned before, but I’ve got a new client coming aboard at the end of next month. It’s someone that contacted me directly. So, with everything, the one new employee will need to be changed to two. I need us to crunch some numbers.”

  Dani and I worked in my office for the next hour. Thank goodness for her, she knows the pipeline of new clients, client renewals, and the hours that Rhea and Soon Yee devote to their current accounts off the top of her head. She still referred to her spreadsheets and information, as did I, but we each have a good handle on our business. Based on current numbers and projections for upcoming clients, we determined that a fourth assistant was viable. But, I can wait a couple of months to hire them, until just after the new year. This will keep my salary and contribution costs down, which will balance out the expenses of renovation and new equipment for all employees. The delay will also allow us to devote full training time to each new hire.

  “Gray, while I’m here, I wanted to talk about my offers. I appreciate you giving me first dibs on the new virtual assistant position, but I’ve decided to stay as the office manager. I really like my job. It’s a great combination of sales, communication, contract negotiation, and accounting. In fact, I have some ideas on how to market the business. Like redesigning our website, some promotional things on YouTube, more social media presence, stuff like that. I’ll send my office manager offer back to you with additional proposals sometime this weekend.”

  I babysat Dani when she was eight and now we are negotiating her job renewal offer. She has ideas about improving the business. I’m so proud. “I look forward to your email. In the meantime, can you please write up a job description for the virtual assistant position? Regarding your marketing ideas, you can have fifteen minutes to present them at meeting on the 26th. Anything else?”

  “No, sounds good. Thanks, Gray.” I walk Dani to the door, then on to my next task.

  Soon Yee, you busy?

  What’s up?

  Just wanted to let you know that I’ll be hiring two new assistants instead of just one. The new hires will be staggered by a couple of months, though. Also, both will be in place before your Spring Festival vacation, which you still haven’t turned in the request for time off.

  I meant to do that yesterday. Thanks for the head’s up. Rhea and I spoke and we’ll each keep our office. It’s cool we are both getting a new officemate. I’ll get the first one, Rhea can have the next. Also, request just sent.

  Dani is gonna present marketing ideas at the 26th meeting. If you have any ideas you wanna propose, you can have 15 mins at the meeting on the 12th. Just let me know.

  I might have some. I’ll think about it this weekend and get back with you. Thanks!

  One down and one to go. I remembered Rhea wanted to discuss something at the monthly meeting.

  Rhea, got a sec?

  On a vidcon. Almost done.

  Just IM me when you’re ready.

  As I wait for Rhea, I check my calendar for tomorrow and next week. Tomorrow, I’m just booking some travel arrangements for a couple of clients and I need to follow up with my Toronto client about how the conference went, light day. Araceli doesn’t need me to hover over her while she sketched designs of the office. Should I investigate the odor first or do my consultation? Choices, choices. Next week is brisk, but not heavy. Nothing that needs to be started today.

  OK, I’m free. What do you need?

  I remember you wanted to talk about something at the meeting. I haven’t received anything yet, so want to check in.

  Oh, yeah. It’s about workload and clients. But since you said the new assistant stuff will be discussed further on Thurs, I’ll speak then.

  Cool. FYI, it’ll be two new assistants, but staggered hire dates by a couple of months. How’d it go with Sully and the apt thing?

  We’ve been texting back and forth. His group is returning Sat night. I’m showing some guy he works with the apt on Sun and Sully said he’d come too.

  Sounds good. You taking him to lunch to thank him?

  He’s coming by my apt afterwards and I’ll make something. Should be fun.

  Yay. Have a good weekend!

  Lunchtime arrived, but I’ve socialized enough, so I eat in my office. Sully, Wendy, and others have asked if I’d ever set it up for employees to work from home. I spoke to Soon Yee and Rhea about it a couple of years ago, but neither wanted to work from home. Soon Yee said she likes coming to an office to separate her home and work life. Plus, Kyle might feel like she’s evaluating his parenting. Rhea didn’t care either way. When Dani first started, she said she was happy to work from the office because if both she and Araceli worked from their home, homicide would result. They love each other, but each needs her own space. Araceli worked from home even before they moved in together two years ago, which was fine as Dani was first finishing school, then working for me.

  I prefer the office environment. I felt physically isolated as a child due to my abilities, but growing up with Kai, Tommie, and my parents, I am somewhat socially adapted. Working in a small office with a handful of others keeps me connected. When I first started working as the archivist, I had a small office space near Sheriff Lowell. I kept the space even when I went to work for SWACon central. When Sheriff Lowell became Liaison Lowell, I moved into the small office in PsyTown Plaza Centro, surrounded by other business. A couple of years later, I purchased and renovated the tra
iler, then moved into it just before I hired Soon Yee.

  I fear that if I work from home, I’ll slowly become a shut-in. I need the interaction of co-workers, friends, even sometimes my siblings, which all force me to push my boundaries. However, despite the drive to socialize, I need a break before the upcoming consultation this afternoon. I require alone time to distance and center myself prior to interacting with several people. Also, I need to mentally prepare for the direct touch reading.

  After lunch, I cover the front phonelines, then meditate for thirty minutes. I hop into my office bathroom for a quick shower, then get dressed in my usual jeans, socks, and mid-calf boots. However, rather than my customary t-shirt or long-sleeved shirt, I wear a sleeveless, long torso shirt with side slits at my hips. The shirt covered my collarbones and torso, and the hip slits stay at or below the waistline of my jeans. The only uncovered skin is from my shoulders to my fingers. I part my hair down the middle, then Dutch braid down each side until the base of skull, where I combined the braids into a single braided bun. Not usually one for makeup, I just throw on some foundation, mascara, and lip gloss for the visiting chiefs. A ‘Keep Away’ charm bracelet for the arms, worn above the belly of each bicep complete my preparation. I grab my thigh length oversized hoodie with a front zipper from my closet and stuff two pairs of my elbow-length gloves in one of my hoodie pockets. I grab my gizmo and voice recorder, rub each down with equipment wipes, then stuff them in my other hoodie pocket. I unload my RAMI and shotgun and place them back in the safe. This afternoon, my mouse gun and an extra magazine will be worn in my belly band holster. The hip slit shirt make the gun easily accessible.

  Holster on, gun and extra magazine tucked away, phone in one back pocket, small wallet in other, gloves on, hoodie on, laptop carry case with strap diagonally across my chest, last minute look around, and I was ready to go.