Todd, phone to his ear, rifled through a stack of papers. When he found the one he needed, he glanced at his boss’ open door across the room and decided he could probably land it on his desk as a paper airplane.
As he folded, the hold music on the other line disappeared. The chipper voice was deafening after the tinny music. “Hello! Thank you for waiting. How can I help you today?”
“Hi.” Todd shifted the phone to his other ear. “I’m calling to check on the status of an order that was due last week but hasn’t been marked as shipped yet.”
“Ah, let me transfer you to our shipping department!”
“They just-” The hold music started playing again and Todd sighed as he tossed the folded report through the air onto his boss’ desk. Howard, also on the phone, quirked an eyebrow at Todd who shrugged as he turned his attention back to the email he’d been writing when Howard had asked for the report.
As he wrapped that up, a delivery woman stepped out of the stairwell. Todd flagged her down and pointed toward the meeting room next to Howard’s office. When she hesitated at the door, Todd called out “just go in. It’s just a group project.”
Todd shifted his attention back to his inbox before the woman had even touched the doorknob and started sorting through the messages that were piling up while he was stuck on the phone.
Instead of answering any of them, he took a moment to breathe and switched his attention to a different document. As he reflected on his attempts to punch up his resume in order to avoid getting another job like the one he’d grown to hate, he wrote “professional juggler” down under his Other Skills section.