For three weeks my lunch disappeared and my notes came back soaked in coffee. Today they did it in front of everyone.
The temp at the end of the table had not said ten words since she started. She stood up and told them to clean it up.
Their leader swung at her. The temp caught her wrist. Then the other two came around the table.
Against the paper cups
They never got a hand on her.
I’ll say that first, because I know that’s what you came here for. Tori and Jen came around the long table, one from each end. Courtney was standing in front of her rubbing her wrist. The temp stood there in her grey blazer with her feet set and her glasses still straight on her face. About ten seconds later all three of them were flat on their backs. I’ll get to how.
Right then I didn’t know any of that. I was standing by the trash can with my lunch in it.
My notebook was on the table in a brown puddle. The ink was already going fuzzy, a whole week of statistics turning into blue clouds.
My phone was leaning against the stack of paper cups where I’d put it when I sat down. Same spot as every day for almost two weeks. Screen toward the cups, back camera facing out, the little red timer running.
I picked it up. That’s the one thing I did. I didn’t yell and I didn’t run for anybody. I picked up my phone and pointed it at the end of the table.
The temp’s eyes left Courtney for maybe half a second. They went to the phone in my hand, and then to me.
She nodded. One small nod, the kind you give somebody who finally showed up.
Then she looked back at Tori, who was closest.
I had never told one person about that phone. So how long had she known it was there?
M. Reyes
I’m twenty-two. I’m a senior at Wright State, business admin, and I need twelve credit hours of internship to graduate in December. That’s the whole reason I was in that building.
It’s a claims office off Wilmington Pike in Kettering, second floor, over a pharmacy. Seventeen dollars an hour, twenty-five hours a week. I started the last week of August.
On intern day the regional director came up from Cincinnati. Her name is Linda Pruitt. She’s maybe sixty, reading glasses on a beaded chain, and she walked the three of us interns through the handbook page by page like she actually cared whether we read it. Page fourteen was the one she tapped. No audio or video recording of coworkers without their consent. We each signed the bottom.
Then she handed me a business card and wrote her cell on the back in pen.
“If something’s off, you call me,” she said. “Don’t sit on it.”
I put the card in my wallet behind my insurance card and forgot about it.
Courtney was the office manager. If you’ve worked in an office you know a Courtney. She ran the birthday sheet cakes. She ran the fantasy football league even though she didn’t watch football. In October she put a little ceramic pumpkin on every single desk. Everybody said Courtney was the glue.
She signed the intern evaluations. She also handled the temp agency, the supply orders and the fridge cleanout on Fridays.
My first day she hugged me in the hallway. “You’re gonna love it here,” she said. A week later she told me there was a coordinator job opening in January, forty-four thousand, and she was the one who picked.
They put me at the desk by the copier. The top drawer had a strip of label-maker tape on it, half peeled off. M. REYES.
Inside the drawer, stuck to the bottom, was a yellow sticky note in purple pen. Eat in your car. Underlined twice.
I thought it was a joke about the microwave. It smelled like burnt popcorn in there all the time.
So I ate in the break room. I sat in the middle of the long table with my spiral notebook, because I have a statistics class Tuesday nights and lunch was my only time to study. Courtney sat at the window end with Tori and Jen. Tori had a black bob and a green blouse she wore like a uniform. Jen had curly red hair and the same navy blazer every day, even in September when the AC was broken.
The first time was three weeks ago. A turkey sandwich, gone from the fridge. The brown bag was in the trash, folded flat into a neat little square.
“Somebody’s hungry around here,” Courtney said. Tori laughed into her yogurt.
Today, standing over that trash can, I looked down and there was the bag again. Folded into the same neat square.
Courtney folds everything. I could hear her from my first day, the hug still on me.
“That’s the intern desk,” she’d said. “Don’t mind the drawer.”
Eight words
The temp started two weeks ago.
She was covering for somebody in accounts payable who was out on leave. The agency sent her, Courtney signed her in, and they gave her the desk across the aisle from mine. Grey blazer, white blouse, black pants. Every day. Hair in a low bun, rectangular glasses. If you’d asked me to describe her after a week I would’ve said she looked like a substitute teacher.
Her first morning she walked over to my desk before she’d even taken her coat off. She didn’t look at me. She looked at the drawer.
“Who had that desk before you?”
“Somebody named Reyes, I guess,” I said.
She stood there a second longer. Then she went back to her desk and logged in and that was it.
Six words. I only noticed because the next day she didn’t say anything at all. By Friday she’d said “Morning” once and “Thanks” when I held the stairwell door. Eight words in a week.
I started keeping a tally on the inside cover of my notebook. A joke for myself. Eight little marks.
She ate at the far end of the long table. Soup from a thermos and a paperback with the cover folded back so you couldn’t see the title. She never looked up from it.
The coffee started the second week. I’d go refill my water at the cooler and come back and my notebook would be open and soaked. A full cup, tipped right over the page I was on.
“Oops,” Courtney said. “Butterfingers.”
The second time she didn’t even bother saying oops. Jen handed me a paper towel like she was being nice. That was almost worse.
I started taking pictures. The notebook, the cup, the time on the microwave clock in the corner of the frame. I put them in a folder on my phone called STATS so nobody would look. By the end of that week there were eleven.
The coffee machine in there makes a noise like a goose when it finishes. I don’t know why I remember that.
One evening around six I came down to the lot and the temp was at the back of her car, a little silver hatchback, with the trunk up. I was two spaces over.
There was a gym bag in there, unzipped. Folded on top was a heavy white jacket, thick like canvas, and a black belt so worn it had gone grey at the edges.
She’d been wrapping white tape around both thumbs every morning at her desk. I’d figured it was carpal tunnel.
She saw me looking and closed the trunk.
The poster by the elevator
There’s a poster by the elevator on our floor. SPEAK UP, a phone number, a promise that it’s anonymous. I’d been reading it every morning for a week.
I called it from my car on a Wednesday. A woman with a southern accent took everything down. The sandwiches, the coffee, the dates. She gave me a case number and I wrote it on my hand.
I felt good for two days.
Friday morning meeting, everybody standing around the copier with their coffee, Courtney said, “Okay, fun one. Somebody called the ethics line about lunch.”
People laughed. Some of them didn’t know what she meant and laughed anyway.
“Those go to HR and HR sends them to local management,” she said. “So, hi. That’s me.” She did a little wave.
Tori looked straight at me. Jen looked at the floor.
The temp was at the back of the group against the filing cabinets. She wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at Courtney, and she didn’t look away the whole time Courtney talked about the parking lot repaving.
After the meeting Courtney came and sat on the edge of my desk. She picked up the little pumpkin and turned it around in her hand.
“You know I’m doing your eval, right? Wright State wants it by the thirtieth.”
I said I knew.
“And the coordinator thing in January. I’d love for that to be you. I really would.” She put the pumpkin down facing the wrong way. “But I can’t write ‘team player’ if you’re not one.”
She got up and fixed her dress.
“Think about what kind of intern you want to be, Brianna.”
Twelve forty-one
That night I looked it up. Ohio is a one-party state. If you’re part of the conversation, or you’re in the room, you can record it. That’s the law.
Page fourteen of the handbook is not the law. I knew that too. I’d signed it.
I did it anyway. The next day I leaned my phone against the paper cups with the camera out and hit record before I opened my notebook. And the day after that, and every day after.
Most of it was nothing. Forty minutes of the microwave, somebody’s call about a hail claim in Xenia, Courtney talking about her sister’s wedding. I’d scrub through it at night with my earbuds in.
Then last Tuesday I got up to use the bathroom and left the phone there. I didn’t think about it. I was gone maybe six minutes.
That night in bed I was dragging through the file and the time stamp said 12:41 and I heard Courtney’s voice, close to the phone, clearer than usual.
“The last one lasted till April,” she said. “Cried in her Corolla every single lunch. Then one Monday she just didn’t come in.”
“Marisol,” Jen said.
“Whatever her name was. Give this one till Halloween.”
Tori laughed. There was the goose noise from the coffee machine. Then my chair scraping when I came back.
I played it four times.
M. Reyes. The sticky note in purple pen. Eat in your car.
I searched Facebook for Marisol Reyes, Dayton. There were two. One was a lady in her sixties with grandkids. The other was a girl about my age, profile set to private, so all I got was the profile picture.
She was standing on a blue mat with both arms up, grinning. She had on a heavy white jacket and a black belt. Somebody was standing next to her, cropped out of the photo. All you could see was their hand on her shoulder.
I lay there with my phone on my chest.
The inside cover of my notebook still said eight.
Courtney’s login
This morning at nine Courtney stopped at my desk with her coat still on.
“Do me a favor. Agency portal. End the temp. Tell them we’re good after Friday.”
“Is she done covering?”
“She’s done,” Courtney said, and went to her office.
I’d been doing the temp timesheets since my first week. Courtney hated the agency website, so she’d given me her login on a sticky note, and every Thursday I clicked Approve on the hours. That’s all I’d ever done. Hours, approve, log out.
End Assignment was a different button. It wanted a reason from a dropdown, and before it let you pick one it opened her whole file.
Heather Kowalski. An address in Beavercreek. Typing speed, Excel, QuickBooks. Then a box at the bottom.
Emergency contact: Marisol Reyes. Relationship: Niece.
Under that, the recruiter’s notes. Candidate requested this client by name. Accepted below standard rate.
I read the word Niece more times than I’d played the recording.
Then I looked up. She was at her desk across the aisle with a thumb half taped, the roll of tape in her other hand. She was looking at my screen. Then at me.
She didn’t say anything. She tore the tape and smoothed it down and went back to her spreadsheet.
I didn’t click End. I closed the tab.
I opened my notebook to the inside cover and looked at the eight marks. Two weeks. She’d been at the end of that table for every one of my sandwiches and every cup of coffee, reading her book.
At 11:50 Courtney leaned out of her office. “Did you do the thing?”
“Portal’s down,” I said.
At ten after twelve Heather picked up her thermos and her paperback and walked into the break room.
My lunch had been in the fridge since eight. I knew exactly what I’d find.
I took my notebook and my phone and pushed open the door.
Paper cups
You know the rest of the room from the top. The bag in the trash. The coffee. Heather standing up at the end of the table and saying “Clean it up,” the first thing she’d said out loud in eight days. Courtney swinging. Heather catching her wrist without even stepping back.
“What are you going to do, temp?” Courtney said, right in her face.
Heather let go. Courtney stumbled a step back into a chair.
“Clean it up,” Heather said again.
Then Tori and Jen came around the table, and I picked up my phone, and Heather nodded at me.
Tori went first. She lunged low at Heather’s middle. Heather ducked under her and turned, and Tori went up over her hip like she weighed nothing. She came down flat on her back on the carpet. The sound she made was all air.
Jen grabbed for the grey blazer. Heather twisted out of it so fast Jen’s hands closed on nothing, and Heather shoved her square in the chest. Jen went backward over two chairs. Both chairs went flat with her.
Courtney came last. She came screaming, no words, just noise, her hands out. Heather caught her arm, turned with it, and put her down on her back on the long table. The paper cups went everywhere. One rolled off the edge and stopped against my shoe.
Then nobody was standing but Heather and me.
Tori on the carpet. Jen in the chairs. Courtney on the table in her red dress with her hair spread out over my wet notebook.
I couldn’t stop looking at Heather. Her bun hadn’t even moved.
She looked down at the coffee puddle under Courtney’s head.
“Now clean it up,” she said.
Nobody said anything for a while. The water cooler did its gurgle. There were people in the doorway now, Gary from claims and two women from billing, and one of them had her hand over her mouth.
Courtney talked first. Of course she did.
“You’re done,” she said from the table. She sat up slow, holding her elbow. “You are so done. That’s assault. I’m calling the agency. I’m calling Kettering PD. Everybody saw you put your hands on us.”
Tori was sitting up now. Jen wasn’t trying to get out of the chairs yet.
“Everybody saw,” Courtney said to the doorway. “Gary, you saw.”
Gary didn’t say anything.
Courtney turned on the table and found me. “Brianna. You saw her attack us. Tell them.”
I had the phone in my hand. It was still recording.
“You swung first,” I said.
“Nobody’s going to believe the intern who called the hotline about her fucking sandwich.” She laughed. It came out wrong. “Your eval’s due in twelve days, babe. Think real hard.”
I’d already thought about it. I’d thought about it every night for a week with my earbuds in.
I stopped the recording and opened the folder and found 12:41 and turned the volume all the way up.
The last one lasted till April. Cried in her Corolla every single lunch.
Gary looked at Courtney.
Give this one till Halloween.
Tori’s laugh on the recording. Then the goose noise.
The real Tori, on the carpet, didn’t laugh.
“You recorded us,” Courtney said. She got off the table. “Oh my God. You recorded us. That’s a firing offense. Page fourteen. You signed it.”
“I know,” I said. “I signed it in front of Linda Pruitt.”
I got my wallet out of my back pocket and took the card from behind my insurance card. Turned it over. The cell number was right where Linda had written it.
Courtney stopped walking.
“Don’t,” she said.
I typed the number in. I attached today’s video, the 12:41 file and the folder called STATS with eleven pictures in it, eighteen by then. I wrote This is Brianna, the intern from August. You said not to sit on it. I hit send. The phone made its little whoosh.
“Twelve forty-nine,” I said. I don’t know why I said the time. It just came out.
Courtney’s face did something I’d never seen it do. All the pumpkin went out of it.
“She was a crybaby who couldn’t hack an office job,” she said. “So are you. You just got yourself fired with me, you dumb bitch. You know that, right?”
I did know that. I’d known it since I looked up the law.
Heather was picking her thermos up off the floor. It had rolled under the table. She checked the lid and set it next to her paperback.
“How’d you know about my phone?” I said.
“You’ve leaned it on those cups every day since the hotline.” She put her blazer back on. “Marisol went to HR in April. They asked her for proof.” She looked at the phone in my hand. “She didn’t have any.”
Courtney was holding her elbow and staring at her. Really looking, for the first time in two weeks.
“Who the hell are you?” she said.
Heather picked up her book.
“Marisol’s aunt.”
Route 35
Linda Pruitt drove up from Cincinnati on Monday morning.
By lunch Courtney’s office was empty except for her pumpkin, which she left on the desk. Tori and Jen carried their stuff out in copier-paper boxes. Gary held the stairwell door for them and didn’t say anything to either one.
Then Linda called me into the conference room. She had the handbook open on the table to page fourteen. She didn’t make me read it.
“I can’t keep somebody who recorded the floor for ten days,” she said. “I wish I could. I’m sorry, honey.”
She’d already called Wright State herself. They’d count my eight weeks. I need four more somewhere else, so I don’t walk in December. I walk in May. The coordinator job in January is going to somebody else, and it should, because I’m not there.
The agency took Heather off their list the same day. She said she figured they would. Courtney never called Kettering PD. Linda had the video.
On Thursday a woman from corporate HR called Marisol and asked if she’d be willing to talk about April.
Two Saturdays later I was on a bench at a judo club in a strip mall on Route 35, between a nail place and a vape shop.
My lunch was next to me in a brown bag. A turkey sandwich. Nobody touched it. My new spiral notebook was under the bag, open to the statistics homework, and the pages were dry.
Marisol was out on the blue mat tying her belt. She’s twenty-one. She works at the Kroger on Dorothy Lane now and she’s re-enrolling in January. She waved at me like we’d known each other for years.
Heather came over in her white jacket with a second one folded under her arm. Too big for me, sleeves past my hands. She dropped it in my lap.
I gave up on the tally a while ago. She talks plenty when she’s teaching.
“Get up,” she said. “Set your feet.”
I put my sandwich down and got up on the mat and set my feet.
If you ever ate lunch in your car to stay out of somebody’s way, I hope somebody stood up at the end of your table.
For more stories about people facing unfair treatment and the moments someone finally pushes back, read “Our Cook Never Came Out Front, and That Fifty Dollars Was Mine” and “The Landlord’s Nephew Texted Me ‘No Problem’ Friday. Sunday He Changed My Lock.”. And for another tense confrontation, see “Three Men Surrounded My Grandpa, and He Told Me Not to Call 911”.
