XXXII: In Which Marlene Makes a Call

“Marlene.” She repeated for the idiot through the window. “It’s not a hard name.”

“Oh no, it just seems your order isn’t quite finished.”

“Not finished? How slow are you? I ordered with the mobile app as soon as I pulled in the line ten minutes ago.” The sheer incompetence of these people was nearly enough to ruin her day. And they wanted fifteen dollars an hour.

“Here you go ma’am. I apologize that there were other customers’ drinks ahead of yours. Next time we’ll try to have it done in less than three minutes.” The cretin had the audacity to close the window and turn away from her. Corporate was going to hear about this! She pulled away from the drive-through, squealing her tires.

Back in her office, Marlene sipped her drink and looked through recent e-mails. Business for later, garbage, garbage, hm one for Mister Sheppard. More about that paranormal group. If it were up to her, she’d just get them all fired and evicted so they’d have to come begging for money. With Mister Sheppard’s money and influence it wouldn’t be that hard, but he had his own plans and she admitted they would probably be effective.

Time to get serious. Marlene popped one of her ‘focus pills’ and washed it down with a swig of iced coffee. She started filtering through reports and memos, prioritizing them for his attention and sending them off to his queue. The click-clack of her finely manicured red nails echoed through the office as she typed her lauded ninety-seven words per minute, summarizing and annotating everything.

And suddenly a goddamned snag. Today was bound and determined to piss her off. She scooped up her phone and dialed a number.  “Hello, Mister Gregory. Marlene Hunt from Onieros… Oh I’m having one of those days, you know how it is.” She said in her most saccharine voice. “I need to put in a record request for some documents that have just not found their way into the twenty-first century. Just a few property records. Can we go back to, say the early nineteen hundreds?... Good. Can we include mineral rights on them as well? I just don’t want any surprises…”

Five minutes later she hung up and got back to her other work.