An Insincerity of Sausage Rolls

“Don’t forget to bring a plate tomorrow. Wouldn’t want Suzanne to feel unappreciated.” I saw the telltale glint in Chrissy’s lying eye. This was all her doing. It would have been mortifying except I was immune. Twenty years of corporate life gives you superpowers.

“Ladies a plate” is a uniquely Kiwi institution hailing from the time of colonisation. A plateful of finger food is a woman’s entry fee to community events. Stuffed eggs and asparagus rolls are generally over-subscribed. 

My friend Ping once described her experience with the custom as a humiliation. “I took an empty plate to a picnic.” Her face twisted. “They laughed at me.” 

I’d put my arms around her. “We hang on to our xenophobic ways,” I said, patting her shoulders with what I hoped was an appropriate degree of sympathy. “Be glad you’re not a man. Back yard cricket’s a blood sport.”

Seated at the boardroom table next day, waiting for the lies to begin, I drifted off into philosophy. What was it about a person’s leaving that canonised them, no matter how little they’d contributed? I recalled a manager from a few years back. She’d failed to show up for my interview, been unable to give a decent briefing to save herself and dropped me in it at every opportunity. At her farewell, the person who’d pushed her out of a job ordered me to “say a few words” and give her flowers. I longed to ram them down her wretched throat. 

Now I just wanted it to be over so I could pick up my half-full filing box and get the hell out of there. I was roused from my musings by Andrew’s voice echoing from the corridor. I watched him walk in with Suzanne, who was a good sort and Chrissie, the poison dwarf. Getting the boss’s Personal Assistant on side is the first rule of corporate survival. If you don’t grease them up, you’re finished. I’d been the living dead for months.

 Andrew had been my boss. He had a unique body language, subtle yet instructive. A raised eyebrow showed amusement. A finger tap to the side of his nose meant better get on with it. Tugging the lobe of his left ear signaled displeasure. The man played his face like an accomplished pianist teasing from their instrument a paean to power. In the year I’d spent in his employ he smiled in all weather, never betrayed a hint of overt temper, only the odd yank of his lobe. People fell over themselves to please him. In a lesser person it would have been gag-worthy, but Andrew was the quintessential charismatic leader, the grand poohbah of our corporate planet. Later, I'd look back and wonder what I'd missed.

It would’ve been the perfect job if only I’d left when I was supposed to. Or his new PA had never been born. In my first weeks of settling into the eighties glass and chrome tower at the top of the quay, a fifty-something woman with gigantic boobs like the prow of a ship had been filling in. She and I got on. We’d been around the block and understood that, while our boss had great vision and a “let’s do this together” attitude, his follow-through was lousy. We were workhorses who liked to get stuff done. We were good hires.

Enter Chrissy, a young woman whose dumpy form secreted an impressive number of deadly sins. She got there late, did nothing, queened it over us, hoovered up sweet treats in her room and never shared. For a little person she had mammoth self-importance. Her temper was explosive, and there was a sluttish aura about her. I couldn't fathom how she'd landed the job. The promotion of incompetents beyond their capacity is another great mystery of working life.

All PAs are dragons at the corporate gate, breathing fire on supplicants who fail to follow a highly specific set of arcane rules. Your number one job is to sniff around them like a low-order pack animal until you get their scent. I’d tried with Chrissy, truly I had, but she was something special.

Perhaps she hated me because I might show her up, but who knows another’s inner thoughts? I suspected her of designs on the boss. Or was she a secret drinker, dragging a slow-leaking hangover behind her? 

Before her arrival, Andrew and I had an established routine. Each Friday I’d add his next all-staff epistle, a briefing on upcoming issues and an analysis of the week’s media to his folder. On Monday I’d sit down with him to agree the week’s plan. We were a team. 

It took a mere four weeks for Chrissy to kill me off. When the summons came, I went to her office like a child to the dentist’s chair – reluctant but confident the pain would be brief. She didn’t ask me to sit, but no way was I going to stand in her presence. I perched instead, trying not to inhale her budget patchouli scent. She wasted no effort on niceties.

 “Andrew says you need to sharpen up,” she said, dropping my precious file on the desk between us with the disgust of someone who's smelled dog shit. Seeing how the pages were slashed with red ink, I straightened my back and prepared for war.

“Sure, of course.” The words almost choked me, but I was determined to maintain control. “What would he like me to change.”

“Everything.” She extracted a few sheets. “This makes him sound weak. He’s the boss, not their friend.”

Andrew and I had talked about tone at the start. He’d wanted it collegial. This had to be her doing. Careful, I told myself. Keep your mouth shut. I decided to catch up with him later and sort the mess out.

His reaction was a slap. “Chrissy’s made an excellent case for a reset,” he said. “The staff are getting antsy. The rumour mill’s in high gear. It's time to make it clear who’s in charge.”

I felt his rejection like a blow from a blunt instrument. It knocked my vow of silence for six. “But you’ll destroy their trust.”

His hand reached up, pincer-like, towards his ear. I saw how wrong it had been for me to think I mattered to him. I sat there gasping like a landed fish, while Andrew delivered my denouement.

“From now on you’ll work directly with Chrissie on all my comms. She’ll cancel our one-on-ones and set up the new appointments in her diary.”

I was reduced to a junior adviser’s role. I could have handled the affront to my professionalism, but the daily contact with its architect was torture. Worse, I’d brought it on myself. If I’d gone when my contract ended, I’d have been spared. I’d been blinded by my own ego, flattered when Andrew asked me to stay until the end of the year. Now I couldn’t get out the door fast enough. But there was one final moment of social racking to survive. 

No leaving do is complete without sausage rolls. They occupy a special place among the icons of my country. A delicious aroma of hot flaky pastry and fatty sausage meat greased the air as the boss cleared his throat and launched into the usual platitudes - job well done, moving on to greater opportunities, blah, blah, blah…I shouldn’t even be here, I thought, feeling invisible as wood smoke on a grey and cloudy day.

 “It’s Joanne’s last day too.” Felicity seemed to be the only friend I had left. She was outraged at how I’d been cut out of the herd and disgusted by this final indignity.

“I’m a contractor and they pay me well,” I’d said when she broached it with me.

“Bollocks. You’ve been here longer than Suzanne.”

I’d begged her not to confront Chrissy. “It’ll only wind her up.”

Now, my cheerleader’s interjection dropped a blanket of edgy silence over the gathering so profound that trucks could be heard barreling along the state highway, a full five kilometres away. 

I stifled an urge to shriek with laughter. Why would they be aware I was leaving too? Most of the people in the building still didn’t know my name. Besides, I was free now, thanks to my aunt’s surprise bequest of enough cash to provision a small army. I gave my number one fan a wink and reached for pastry. 

The boss made a quick recovery. “So, what are you planning to do next?”

Here it was at last, my Lotto win moment. “Never work again!”

Lifting a paper napkin, I filled it with savoury treats, squeezed a dollop of tomato sauce on top and let my eyes run over the gaping faces ranged around the room. 

There she was, puce with pent up fury. I smiled, wiggled my spare fingers in her direction and walked away.