Welcome to the ongoing saga of whatever story we are telling right now It’s Friday. Let’s do something else for a few minutes…
Daren shot back to his desk and made sure all of his changes were saved both on the shared drive and on his local drive—not a great idea, usually, but this might be an emergency, and he could always delete the extra copy later. Everything closed and as backed-up as he could make them from his meager station, he stepped into the hallway towards the equipment room. He froze mid-step, half in and half out of his office, suddenly unsure what he planned to do.
The noise was in the equipment room, so he was going to the equipment room to do…what, exactly? Daren was not an Engineer on his best and most delusional day, and that was ok with him, because if Engineers could design ads then he wouldn’t have the Toyota account. Call a doctor when you’re sick, drive a car made by someone who makes cars, not ads, and don’t touch the equipment room if you aren’t an Engineer. Some things are just good rules to live by.
But the noise was bad. It wasn’t happening, and then it was happening, which means something happened, and that something has to be bad. Logic. What do you do when something bad happens at the office? You call the boss, because that’s why the boss makes more money than you do—to deal with stuff like that. Plus, any decision made would be the wrong one if it didn’t turn out as hoped and no one called the boss for authorization first.
Daren pivoted back towards the desk to call, then froze again. What was he going to tell her? “Hi, boss. Sorry to bother you at 2:00 AM, but the equipment room is making this knocking sound. What should I do?” The scene wasn’t playing out well in his head.
She would ask what it is. I would tell her I didn’t know. She would ask who would know. I would tell her we have a maintenance contract. She would tell me to call the maintenance contract person and call her back.
Ok, that made sense. Daren would skip the step where he sounded dumb, call the Engineer, then text Brianna to tell her that he was working late when it happened and he’s already called it in but wanted to give her the heads up. That was much better.
Daren moved toward the computer to look up the Engineer’s name. Phil? But it would be under the company name. Daren flipped to S in his contacts for SkyTech.
But what was he going to tell Phil? “Hi. My name is Darin and I’m new to the team. I think I saw you when you were here last time but I was in a meeting and you were in the equipment room and talking with Matt and Sharon. I’ve heard a lot of good things about you and we should hang out next time you’re here, but in the meantime, sorry to bother you, the equipment room is making this knocking sound…”
Daren rolled his eyes. This was ridiculous. He would touch nothing, but there was no reason he couldn’t open the door, flip on the light, and look around the room. That way he would at least be able to tell the Engineer something, even if that something is that the room looks the same despite the noise. He might even be able to pinpoint what machine seemed to be the noisiest, and that might be the sort of information an Engineer might need to solve the problem anyway.
Daren walked to the equipment room with his eyes focused in front of him as though he was afraid to look around. He paused at the door, took a breath, and slid the tinted glass panel to the left.