The Company Man, part 3

The accounting department had peach colored walls with white square columns occasionally breaking up the straight edges made by the drywall. These cut into some of the cubicles making them a a little smaller. Henry always considered himself lucky to have not gotten one of those. The people that did never complained, but Henry secretly suspected they wished for more space.

The cubicles were about half a man’s height, so you could sit down and concentrate, but stand up and see who else was in the office. That made tracking everyone else down a lot easier. The only office belonged to Arnold, at the far end.

“Good morning Henry!” Jonah called to him. Henry nodded politely. He liked Jonah. Jonah was a young, upbeat guy who befriended everyone he met. It was hard not to like Jonah. In fact, Henry could not think of anyone in the company that had met and did not like Jonah. He had that infectious laugh and smile that made everyone feel better.

As Henry sat down and started up his computer, Jonah walked over to him.

“Hey, listen,” Jonah started. “Some techs from research were down here just a few minutes ago looking for you.”

Henry rolled his eyes. “They must be new,” he muttered. “They sometimes think that if they come talk to me, it’ll somehow speed up getting their purchase orders, when really it just slows me down.”

Jonah shook his head. “They didn’t mention any purchase orders,” he explained. “They said they needed to talk to you about some upcoming project and asked me to ask you to head over to R&D as soon as you got in.”

Henry wrinkled his nose. He’d never been to the R&D department before. He wasn’t even sure where that was. Plus, he had a lot of work to do that day already. He didn’t want to fall behind. What would his boss think? “Did they clear it with Arnold?” Henry asked.

Jonah shrugged his shoulders. “They didn’t say, and Arnold’s out this week on vacation.”

Henry’s face soured. He didn’t like the idea of R&D pulling him away from his job to help them with theirs and risk getting in trouble with his boss. “This had better be important,” Henry grumbled. With a heavy sigh, he stood and began navigating his way back to the front desk.