the call...

If the phone in her pocket buzzed one more time, she would seriously consider disowning this piece which the population claimed to be one of the best inventions of technology. She had absolutely no idea who would be trying to call her in the midst of a harrowing Monday afternoon.

She crossed one jean-clad leg over another and leaned back in her chair, pretending to listen to her boss rave and rant about her invisible short-comings. It was another mystery in her clueless Monday.

She had woken up feeling distinctly positive about the morning and thus very hopeful of the week which would follow. But out of the bed, is as far as the positive feeling followed her. She had opened her wardrobe to discover that all her ‘work trousers’ had seemingly taken an affinity to the laundry basket. The laundry basket had however stubbornly refused to make it to the washing machine over the weekend! Someone ought to have written a book on laundry psychology! Which left her with but one choice – don on jeans on the one day when your boss would be sure to notice that you were not a mere wall décor!

She had teamed her jeans with a very official looking white shirt and even gone to the extent of ‘corporating’ her look with a black silk scarf. You think that would have helped?

The first thing she walked into her office, she was summoned in by her boss. He had peered at her and said,

“no doubt this is your definition of office wear….”

And the meeting had begun. She was flawed. At least that is what she thought her boss was trying to tell her through his numerous incitations. It was not that she really had made all those many mistakes; it was just that he was having his round of the male equivalent of PMS. He did get these mood swings once every month. Quite regularly.

But today it seemed to stretch on way beyond the normal. She was closeted with him, in this confine of glass for well over two hours, listening and re-listening that, what she had already heard minutes before. What had definitely worsened matters was the peal of her cell-phone.

It began quite innocently five minutes into the meeting. Her boss was in the midst of proving a point when her phone had begun to sing “umbrella- ella …” It did seem rather funny, but she had turned an embarrassing pink. She’d cut the call and smiled apologetically at her boss.

Every five minutes after that the phone needed to be choked into silence as her persistent caller refused to give up. Annoyed she had switched her phone to the silent mode and pushed it into her pocket, where it had buzzed its presence with a dramatic whir.

Her mind was busy wondering who needed to get in touch with her that desperately. At one point her thoughts had led her into an almost panic – nobody was in an accident, right? Quite unconsciously she started twitching her foot, much to the distraction of her boss, who sighed quite melodramatically and said,

“I suppose we should convene the meeting after you have taken that call?”

As if on cue her phone whirred again. She hastily excused herself and not quite out of the room barked an annoyed “yes?” into the phone.

“Hey!” came the hearty reply.

“You would be?” she asked not wanting to be nice to this particular, as yet unidentified, oppressive entity.

“waiting for the past two and a half hours for you to answer your phone, so that I could quite innovatively ask you out for lunch. But innovation is wasted on you, isn’t it?” came the curt reply.

She stared aghast at her phone. Double-checked to see if her eyes and ears were deceiving her, then looked back through the glass panes into the room she had just walked out of. Sure enough her boss was grinning from ear to ear, shaking his cell phone in front of her face.