Part 51: Mrs. Brixton

“Mrs. Brixton. Theresa. Mrs. Brixton,” the department head said, leaning forward, resting his arms on the conference room table. It was his responsibility to begin the meeting, since he was Mrs. Brixton’s direct supervisor. “We think it’s time that we had a conversation.”

“We have conversations every day, Todd,” Mrs. Brixton replied.

“Yes, but, we --” he made an inclusive circle with his hand in the air, a lasso motion “--are going to have one today.”

The company’s Vice President, sitting next to him, cleared his throat. He was leaning back in his own chair, dressed in jeans and an ill-fitting polo shirt to prove he didn’t have to dress nicely to get respect. “Theresa, we wanted to ask you here today in order to discuss the project that your division has been assigned to be responsible for actionalizing.”

“What about it?” She still had a lot of work to get caught up on. Today was supposed to have been the day, just like yesterday. But this might mean pushing it to tomorrow. Oh, well. It would get done. It always did.

“Well, first, we wanted to say how much we have appreciated your diligence,” the department manager said.

“And your resilience,” the Vice President added.

“Your stick-to-it-iveness; your elan; your joie de travail.”

The Vice President winced. One French phrase added color and charm; two was overkill. “Yes. All that. We appreciate it. Thank you.”

This was the nice thing about work, Mrs. Brixton reflected. Sometimes you needed to hear those particular words, even if they were only a prelude to something negative; some part of our primitive reptile brains still responded to them. And her children certainly never said them. (Especially not Victoria, who thought the Internet was free as air, listed in the UN's Declarations of the Rights of the Child.) So it wasn’t her fault she felt more alive at work than in family life. It was biology.

“But we do have some news to impart to you relevant to that project,” the Vice President continued. “It has come to light that, due to circumstances beyond our control, we can no longer support that work in perpetuity, despite its obvious merits to the company and to society at large.”

“I see,” said Mrs. Brixton, her mind still on Victoria, and whether she would be satisfied by a compelled ‘Thank you,” given under duress.

“I’m afraid she doesn’t,” the department chair said to the Vice President.

“Don’t talk about me in third person.”

“See? She doesn’t.”

“I do.”

“Do what?”

“Don’t test me either, Todd.” The department chair was, on paper, her supervisor, but in practice he was subservient to her and they both knew it. The Vice President, though, did not; and so Todd’s only goal was to make it out of this meeting with the illusion of his superiority intact. Maybe it would be safer to remain silent for a while.

“Theresa, allow me to reiterate,” the Vice President intervened. “The work you have performed and sanctioned to this date has been invaluable; however, the company has no choice but to pull the plug on the project moving forward . . .”

Pull the plug! That was it - the solution to her problems! She still had one left in the chamber: she could still pull the plug.

“Ah, yes, I understand now. Thank you, gentlemen,” she said, getting up to leave, happier than she had been in quite some time. Even her headache seemed to have gone away with the burst of dopamine.

“Uh, Theresa--” the department chair said hesitantly.

“Let her go, let her go,” the Vice President said, waving his hand to Mrs. Brixton, who left the door to the conference room open in her exuberance, a minor breach of protocol. “If she wants to continue to apply her mental resources to a dead project, then that’s her prerogative. Simply see to it that she is denied further access to company resources.”

“Of course.” The department chair began to fret internally. How exactly was he supposed to do that? What resources had Mrs. Brixton and her team been using, anyway? Did this mean she couldn’t use her company computer anymore? What about the printer, the copy machine, the shredder? These were things he was supposed to know, things he would know if he was actually a department head and not an impostor.