Out To Play

I got to work, even after stopping for toast, at 9.30am. OK, it wasn’t the ambitious 9.00am I had aimed for, but whatever, I was there on time. Boss Lady wasn’t present to witness the miracle, which killed my excitement somewhat. Mr. G informed me that she wouldn’t be in for a few days and that she had sent us a email, which I read. Something had happened (which I won’t go into here) and she wasn’t well but would be back next week sometime. All was forgiven for the previous day. She hadn’t seemed herself and now I understood why. I was worried about her and hoped she was doing OK.

Still, her absence meant that there was a little more slack at work, which I suppose I am grateful for. It’s weird, it’s not like I work any less when she’s not here, but I don’t have that impending sense of doom when she checks to follow up on things or delegates things to me. Miss T wasn’t getting in till a little later, but she was still not quite feeling work when she arrived. “I’m fed up. I’ve had quite enough of this place this week,” she explained, “I feel like being bad today.” “Bad in what way?” I questioned, wondering if she meant she was going to eat naughty stuff or just cause some trouble. “Hmm, I haven’t decided yet,” she said, with a wicked glint in her eye.

Later that day, a student with the cutest name ever came in to see her, but she was away from her desk. Mr. G tried to help with his query in the meantime without success, so checked with Miss T when she arrived back a few minutes later. “It’s him!” she said to us excitedly, repeating his name from his ID card with a cheeky grin on her face. I recognised the name, but couldn’t remember exactly why he was one we had made a note of. Miss T walked over to her friend who manages the counter to show her the ID card, saying again rather loudly, “Look who it is! He’s come out to play!” Unbeknownst to her, the student was waiting for her at the barriers a little further down, from which our desks are fully visible. Mr. G and I muttered to each other, trying really hard not to laugh. “She doesn’t know he’s at the barrier, does she? She doesn’t know he can see her. He’s just seen her laughing and showing his ID card to four different people!” We carried on trying keep straight faces so that the student wouldn’t feel any more puzzled and embarrassed than he probably already did. When she returned, Miss T reminded us of the reason for the student’s notoriety. “Oh, it was him!” she said, still chuckling, “I’ll never forget that. He’s the one I called to speak to and when I asked his dad if he was there, his dad said ‘Sorry, he’s gone out to play.’ He was 18 years old, why is he going out to ‘play’?!” She couldn’t stop laughing. We get much amusement from the free comedy show that is undergraduate students and their parents.