10-7-09

I plopped down on Zoey’s couch absolutely exhausted from the week I’d had at work. It was our Friday night ritual that we did every week to check-in with each other’s lives. Zoey was a little late because a photo shoot she was directing went long so I kicked my shoes off and drank my glass of ginger ale. Before I knew it I had fallen asleep and was being woken up by Zoey walking into her apartment carrying a pizza box and grumbling about one of the models she had to work with.

Zoey works for a fairly large fashion magazine as the creative director for the photo shoots and always has tons of stories about model meltdowns and crazy outfits that make me laugh. She has wavy red hair and has a killer fashion sense because she gets all sorts of freebies from her job. Her voluptuous figure is definitely something other women could be jealous of and not to mention the shoes she owns.

“Okay, there’s something wrong, you’ve only eaten three slices of pizza. What’s the deal,” Zoey refilled my ginger ale and looked at me with her deep green eyes.

“I had to fire two people at work today,” I said as I laid my head down on her lap.

I love my job and the only thing I don’t like about it is having to fire people. I’m the head of the HR department for a medium-sized newspaper and we have a strict policy on co-worker dating. Employees are allowed to date but absolutely no PDA is allowed during the workday between employees. As an HR rep, I have to enforce the office policies and it sucks when I have to write someone up let alone fire someone for not complying.

I had a ton of filing to do and ran out of staples. When I went to the supply closet to get some more, I opened the door to find two of our employees going at it on the reams of paper that had just been delivered. I had to fire them on the spot which made for a very awkward situation as they were clearing their desks. Vicki had been one of the employees I had to fire, she was our new receptionist and I had been having a hard time filling the position. I was elated to find that she was such a great fit for the position and hired her immediately after her interview. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who took such a liking to her. Eric, our sports writer, was her partner in crime and was also fired.

Zoey and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. Ah, the joys of being in HR.

When I finally went home filled with pizza, I noticed that the name plate on my neighbor’s door had been removed. The small family that lived next door to me for the past two years were nice enough and I never had a problem with them. When they started talking about having trouble making ends meet after the husband was laid off and the possibility of moving I was truly sad. Now that they’re gone the building seems kind of empty without the sounds of children playing coming through my wall.