I stood in the breakroom fixing myself a cup of coffee in the hopes of clearing my head. In a couple of hours, I had my monthly meeting with the executives. As head of sales, I had to brief the executive team on the company's sales each month and the lead up to it always had me a bit on edge because a couple of the board members didn't particularly like me and thought they knew people who could get better sales.
I took a sip of the coffee I had just fixed myself and grimaced. The coffee had clearly been sitting on the warmer for quite some time because it had a distinct burnt taste to it. Frustrated, I dumped the coffee out of both my cup and the pot and poured some fresh grounds into a filter to make a fresh pot. While I waited impatiently for the fresh coffee to brew, I heard the door to the breakroom to open and in walked Claire from accounting.
"Hi Bobby." she said cheerfully walking to the refrigerator.
"Hi Claire." I said barely letting my eyes leave the coffee maker as it still brewed away.
"You ok? You look tense" Claire asked as she pulled her lunch out of the refrigerator.
"I've got my monthly sales meeting with the higher ups in a couple of hours." I said.
"Oh, I'm sorry." she said giving me a sympathetic look. "I know some of those guys are real dicks."
"Mathews in particular has made it clear he thinks others would be better at my job." I said as the coffee maker finally quit dripping. I filled my cup up with fresh coffee and took a sip that tasted much better than the prior one did. I turned to leave the breakroom but before I did Claire smiled at me and said,
"Don't worry, you'll be fine."
"Thanks." I said with a weary smile.
A little later on I found myself in the supply closet looking for a sleeve of paper so I could make copies of my sales report to give to each member of the executive team. Naturally, someone had used the copier earlier and left it nearly empty of paper and I was the lucky person to be next to need to make copies. As I looked around impatiently in the small closet for the boxes of paper, I swore to myself in frustration before hearing a voice behind me. I looked back and saw Claire giving me a curious look.