Chapter 7

The woman - who you would later find out was the Officer Administrator - was a little off in her offer of a few minutes to get set up. You and Sabrina had barely arranged the chairs and pulled the survey sheets out and there was already a knock on the door.

“Uh, hey?” asked the man at the door. “This is the survey thing, right?” He was dressed business-casual, which seemed to be the norm out on the office floor. He was also utterly forgettable in almost every way.

“Yes, it is. Please come in and sit down,” Sabrina said, taking charge.

“Sure, sure,” the guy said. “Is this going to take long?”

“Not unless you have a lot to say,” you said, trying to take Sabrina’s suggestion to be more friendly.

“Oh, uh, OK I guess,” the guy said. He settled in and the surveys started up.

What then occurred was the biggest waste of time you could think of. You and Sabrina took turns taking notes and reading out the questions, and crossing out employee names on the master list as they came in. Doing the survey probably would have taken each person five minutes if it had been sent out by email - but classic BMA, they went the extra mile and wanted to make sure all of the employees of Chambers (aka. the owners) knew the firm was taking things seriously.

“I bet they’re still going to bill hours as if Darrel was doing this,” you muttered to Sabrina during one of your infrequent breaks.

“You’re probably right,” she sighed, looking over the short stack of responses you’d already gathered. It was all fairly simple stuff; questions about current practices, questions about where each employee thought the company could better their practices, or where the company was lacking. Questions about bosses, which no one ever answered truthfully.

Each interview took about ten minutes, and by 11:30 you had gotten through eleven of the suckers when the Office Admin lady poked her head back in.

“That’s all for now. We’ve got a big staff meeting at 12:30, so everyone’s out for an early lunch. We should be good to pick back up at 1:30, maybe 2pm at the latest. Does that work for you?”

You and Sabrina looked to each other, and then both turned and said, “Yes.”

“That works great,” Sabrina followed.

“Alright,” the lady said before leaving. “See you at two.”

“Holy crap. We’ve got a two and a half hour lunch?” Sabrina said under her breath.

“This day just got so much better,” you said, standing up and offering her a high five.

Sabrina accepted, clapping your hand softly as if in a daze. “What do we do for that long?”

“Let’s go eat somewhere and actually, like, sit down,” you said. Usually you and the other interns got a half hour for lunch, which meant grabbing something from the crappy little bodega next to the firm building, or if you wanted to risk it running down the street to the sub place.

“Yeah,” Sabrina nodded, then got a look on her face. “Actually, that’s a really good idea. Come on, I saw a place on the walk over that we should try.”

“Sure,” you agreed, quickly packing up your papers.

You two hit the street, backtracking a block, and Sabrina led you to a pub-like place that was probably a trendy bar at night. You entered, and since you were there before noon the place was still fairly empty.

“Good morning,” the hostess said as she met you at the little podium near the front door.

“Hey there,” you said, putting on a grin and trying to show Sabrina that you’d been paying attention to her silly scolding over your business-relation skills. “Beautiful day out there, isn’t it?”