(Monday, April 30)

There was a rustling and a murmuring at the desks around me and I looked up with a frown to see what was going on.
"Good morning, Ms. Mihara," Akio Kodama called with a cheesy smile on his face, ever the suck-up.
I looked over to see the president of The Ichikiwa Design Group, Hana Mihara, entering the room followed by a man who looked to be in his late twenties. I examined him carefully, he was one of those men who was extra pretty. He looked like he spent too much money on fashionable clothes and at a fancy salon getting his maple syrup colored hair styled. He was just the sort of person that I liked to avoid.
"If I could have everyone's attention," Ms. Mihara called out. "I'd like to make an announcement." All noise in the office stopped as everyone focused their attention on Ms. Mihara. "I am very sorry to say that Tsuchida turned in her resignation over the weekend, effective immediately."
The room filled with exclamations and gasps as everyone around me reacted with shock. I wasn't surprised myself, Tsuchida had always been flighty. She was just the sort of dimwit to abandon her job as the Purchasing Manager without a backward glance.
"It really isn't my place to speak of Tsuchida's personal life," Ms. Mihara was saying. "But since everyone is so concerned, I will tell you that she met a man on a matchmaking app who lives on Okinawa. Apparently, things went very well when they met in person and she packed up and moved in with him."
I felt anger crawl up my spine, but I held it in. What infuriatingly irresponsible behavior! My coworkers were making little comments as if they thought it was romantic and she was lucky, when she was just plain stupid. Dump an excellent job to go and live with a man that you just met? That isn't a love story, it's the beginning of a movie about a woman who finds out that her new husband has a bunch of bodies in the basement. But no one would appreciate my words of wisdom, so I kept my mouth shut.
"And so, I am pleased to introduce you to Jomei Date. He's going to be our new Purchasing Manager starting today!"

I blinked as everyone around me erupted in surprise and began greeting Date. This could not be possible! Tsuchida was barely out the door and they'd already replaced her? Without announcing the opening and conducting interviews? They'd given the job to a stranger, when it should have been mine!
I'd worked in Purchasing for eight years! I'd carried Tsuchida through the past four years and the entire department, too! Ms. Mihara should be coming over here and handing me the job without bothering to look at other candidates. She should not be walking in here with an outsider and putting him in charge of us. Of me!
I took a few deep breaths to calm myself. It would not do to throw a fit in front of Ms. Mihari and the fancy pantsed Jomei Date. He'd obviously been hired because of his looks. He was the type who breezed through life because he was pretty and always said the right thing. People like that made me sick. Who would have guessed that Ms. Mihara would have fallen for those looks. She was old enough to be his mother. What was she doing, looking for a boytoy?
"Akiko! Please come over here and let me introduce you to Date," Ms. Mihara called.
I reined in my temper before pushing myself up from my chair and walking over to stand with the two of them. They were all smiles. I wasn't.
"Date, this is Akiko Sera. She is the rock of the Purchasing Department. Anything you need to know, she's the one to ask," she said happily. "Akiko, I know that I can depend upon you to help get Date settled in as quickly as possible."
"I can do that," I said seriously, turning to look Date in the eye with an unwavering stare. "Welcome to Purchasing."
His cheeks flushed and he fidgeted a bit as he looked at me. I get that sort of reaction a lot. People just don't know how to react to someone as straightforward as I am, but it was disgusting to see it in someone who was going to be my boss.
"It's nice to meet you, Akiko. I'm looking forward to working with you." He managed to pull himself together and give me a winning smile. 'Sorry, pal. Your good looks aren't going to win me over.'
"Yes," I said and turned around to walk back to my desk. I'd wasted enough time on this little meet and greet.
Behind me, I could hear Ms. Mihara saying, "Oh, she's always like that. You'll get used to her. She's crucial to this department, everyone learns to work with her after a while."
I sat down and pulled a stack of order forms towards myself. It was funny to think of Jomei Date having to get used to working with me. He was the sort that everyone else was going to bend over backwards for just because he looked cool. The type who was used to having his path strewn with rose petals.
Working with me would probably be a big shock for him. He'd stolen my job and I wasn't going to pull any punches.

(Later That Evening)

That evening I sat at a long table with the rest of the Purchasing Department at the customary dinner to greet our new boss. Date was sitting at the head of the table, cheeks flushed and laughing as my coworkers chatted excitedly with him and everyone drank too much.
Except me. I wasn't drinking at all. I was keeping an eye on Date, gleaning every bit of information that I could about him. So far I had learned that he didn't have a girlfriend, had graduated from an excellent university, enjoyed playing golf and soccer, preferred Japanese food to foreign food, and he hadn't yet seen the latest Marvel movie.
He also didn't seem to mind that nearly every female at the table was flirting with him. He never failed to respond to their silly questions and comments with a good natured reply. It was sickening to see how fake everyone was being. They didn't know a thing about this man except that he was our boss and he spent too much time styling his hair each morning, but they were slathering themselves all over him like dogs begging for approval.
"Okemi! Did you take off your engagement ring?!" I yelled as she leaned halfway down the table to clink glasses with Date. "What would your fiance think if he knew?!"
"Stop it, Akiko! This isn't any of your business," Okemi said defensively and sat back down in her seat with a huff. "I just put it in my purse because I don't want to lose it if I get drunk."
"Alcohol causes swelling. It doesn't make your fingers shrink. So, you should feel free to put your ring back on. You're not going to lose it," I barked.
Okemi huffed again, rolled her eyes and turned to talk to someone else. I looked up to see Date looking between the two of us. When his eyes glanced back to me, I stared right back at him. He flushed pink and reached to take another drink of beer.
'Weakling.'

(Wednesday, May 16)

"Yes, I can hold." I was on the phone with a tile supplier. At times like this, when my eyes were free to wander around the office, I always took a moment to check out what Date was doing. My desk was situated so that my back was to him, but on the wall opposite my desk and down about a yard to the right, there was a large mirror mounted behind the office coffee station. If I pushed my chair back a few inches I had a perfect view of Date through the mirror, and no one could even tell that I was spying on him.
Not that there was a lot to see. He basically cycled through a short list of time wasting activities: shuffling papers, doing something on his computer, running his fingers through his hair, wandering around chatting with people in the office, or talking to people who stopped by to chat with him at his desk. He always talked about soccer games, movies, the weather - in short, useless small talk. If someone had an important question or needed help of any kind, they came to me.
As I spoke to someone about the tile shipment, Kodama came over to my desk and stood waiting quietly for me to get off the phone. Through the mirror, I could see Date noticing this. His eyes narrowed and a little frown crossed his face. Grabbing some papers off of his desk, he stood up and left my field of vision.
When I hung up the phone and turned to look up at Kodama, I noticed that Date was at the copier, which put him in the perfect spot to eavesdrop on me. The sneaky bastard.
"What do you want?" I asked Kodama, keeping an eye on Date who was obviously wasting company resources by making a bunch of unnecessary copies to cover up his spying.
"Team 3 is trying to do some weird new thing with their ordering and I have no idea how to handle it," Kodama whined like a little girl.
"Let me see," I barked, taking the papers he held from his hands and skimming over the order forms.
"This doesn't follow standards," I said. "But it looks like it will work. I'll have to go to their office and talk to them in person and probably contact the vendors. If they don't have a good reason for doing it this way, they'll have to change it. We don't need them making more work for us just because they want to get creative."
"Okay, thanks," Kodama replied and headed back to his desk, happy as hell that his incompetence had gotten him out of a little work.
I looked up to see Date staring at me. When our eyes met, I hardened my gaze and lowered my eyebrows. He gave a little start, flushed pink and scampered back to his seat. I looked up in the mirror to see his reflection fidgeting nervously with the things on his desk.
They might as well have put a twelve-year-old girl in charge of our department.

(Tuesday, May 22)

"… and you're not going to weasel your way out of this with lies or excuses!" I shouted into the phone, looking up and noticing that Date had entered the office and was staring at me with a stupid look on his face. "It's due tomorrow! You signed a contract stating it will be delivered on time and you will follow through! I am not going to accept any of your pathetic attempts at explaining this away! I don't care if the power was out and the computers were down! It is your responsibility to follow through with your contract to the letter. I expect delivery tomorrow, as promised!"
I slammed the phone down, panting a little because I'd gotten worked up, and looked over to see that Date hadn't gone to take a seat at his desk. He was skulking around the office like he didn't know what his job was. I shot him an angry look – I was already angry, might as well make some use of the leftovers – and went back to checking over the requisition form that was on my desk.
"Uh, Sera..."
Spinning around in my chair, I looked up to see Date standing next to my station. "What?!" I demanded. I just knew that he was going to ask me what he was supposed to do next. 'Stupid man…'
"It's a real problem that you're talking to vendors like that. I'm having trouble believing that this hasn't been addressed before. I'll take the time to look through your file and discuss this again later if necessary, but for now, just know that speaking like that to anyone during work hours is unacceptable," he lectured, his spine rigid as he tried to come off as confident.
"What are you talking about?" I barked. Had this man lost his mind? Was I going to be expected to carry an incompetent fool who was also out of touch with reality? I put my pencil down before I snapped it between my fingers.
His pretty eyebrows raised in surprise. He must get them waxed. 'How metrosexual can you get, Date?'
 "The conversation that you just had on the phone?" he said as if maybe I was the one that was losing my mind. "You were yelling at a vendor because they aren't going to make their deadline?"
"Ha! That's a laugh. I wasn't yelling at a vendor. I was yelling at my niece," I explained. "My brother has me yell at his kids about their homework and grades. Next time, ask a few questions before you start reprimanding an employee. You're wasting company time."
"Ah, yes. Sorry about that, but next time please make personal calls during your own time," he said, making his voice extra firm like that was going to scare me into following his orders.
"I'm working through my break and just took a couple of minutes to make the call. Of course, now I've taken several minutes to deal with this," I snapped, and spun back around to my desk to focus on the requisition form. After a moment, I heard his footsteps walking away and I looked up at the mirror behind the coffee pot and saw him taking a seat at his desk.
'Only two more hours of pretending to work before you can go home and buff your nails, Date.'

(Friday, June 1)

I was sorting through invoices when a movement caught my eye and I looked up to see Kodama walked past my desk on the way to talk to Date. I moved into position to get a good look at the reflection in the mirror behind the coffee pot in time to see Kodama stepping up to Date's desk.
"Hey, Mr. Date," he said. "You don't look so good. Have you been working late?"
I perked my ears up and narrowed my eyes. I knew that Date wasn't working late, there was no sense sitting around after hours pretending to work if no one was around to be your audience. I'd noticed that Date looked a little off, but I'd figured that he'd probably just run out of foundation.
"Yeah, well, I've been having trouble sleeping," Date said with an exhausted sigh.
"What really? Is the job too stressful?" Kodama asked. 'Please, Kodama, let's not pretend that a dead squirrel couldn't do the job just as well. There is no stress involved in a job that you aren't actually doing.'
 "No," Date answered. "I've...been having nightmares."
"Nightmares? What...wait. About her?" Kodama's voice was surprised.
I froze as I saw through the mirror that they were looking at the back of my head. Without moving my head a millimeter, I looked right and then left, but no one else was aware of the conversation going on over at Date's desk. I'd always had hearing that was practically superhuman.
"It's destroying me," Date said.
Kodama laughed. "Seriously, Mr. Date. You need to put that woman in her place. You can't let things get so bad that you're having nightmares and you can't even sleep."
"Yeah," Date said weakly. "That's easier said than done."
"You're damned right," I thought. 'Just let that fancy-ass bastard try to "put me in my place". He thinks he's having nightmares now? I haven't even begun to fight.' This was unbelievable. I hadn't even done anything yet and the man was already falling apart. How long could he last at his job if this was the sort of backbone that he had? He'd probably quit in no time at all and I'd be getting a promotion by the end of the summer.

(Wednesday, June 6)

"Sera, there's a problem with one of your accounts. We need to get down to the warehouse," Date called across the office.
"Right," I said, putting my pencil down."Which one?"
"Sunrise Salon."
I opened a desk drawer and pulled out the file for the Sunrise Salon before getting up to follow him out of the room.
"The stuff started arriving last week. For some reason, people have just been loading it into storage containers without checking the quantities. The numbers are all wrong," he explained as we got on the elevator on our way to the warehouse.
When we arrived, Igarashi, the warehouse supervisor, met us at the door. He looked ready to blow his top. "We're doing this new autonomous teams thing in the warehouse," he said. "I'm supposed to just assign projects to teams and let them take full responsibility for it from beginning to end. This team made a lot of mistakes. Look at this!"
He handed me a stack of order forms that were related to the Sunrise Salon account. Every single one of them had coffee splattered on it, smearing the numbers.
"How did all of these papers get coffee on them like this? You would have to spread them all out and spray coffee in order for this to happen!" I was quickly joining Igarashi in the blow-your-top club.
"Apparently they were playing some game while they had the forms on a table. Since the numbers are smudged, they didn't bother checking the orders when they came in. They just threw the stuff in the containers and assumed it would all be good," he answered in a disgusted voice.

Date and I followed Igarashi out to the storage containers where the supplies for Sunrise Salon were being held. The team was pulling everything out of the containers and doing an official count, counting everything at least twice.
"Oh! I'm here!" A high pitched voice called, and I turned around to see Nanami Hokama running towards us waving some papers. She was the young designer in charge of the Sunrise Salon account and a member of Ebihara's team. She probably had a lot of hair and skin tips to share with Date, I'd have to make sure the two of them didn't get off track.
"Okay," she said when she reached us. She stood up tall and threw her shoulders back, trying to show that she was competent and in charge. "I've got my copy of the order forms right here. I heard that something went wrong with the warehouse copies?"
"They went wrong all right," I said. "But it still doesn't make sense. Just looking at this stuff you can see that the numbers are wrong. It looks like there are over 20 sinks, but only two chairs. How is it possible that orders to multiple vendors all got screwed up for the same account?"
I pulled my copy of the order forms out of my folder and scanned them. "The numbers here make sense," I said. "I wouldn't have signed off on them otherwise."
Hokama looked down at the papers in her hand and her face immediately flushed. "Well...that is strange," she stammered. "How could everything just...go wrong like that?"
I snatched her papers out of her hand as she went to hide them behind her back. 'What is she, seven?' Looking them over, the mystery was immediately solved. "What did you do to these order forms?! Is this some kind of a joke?! These numbers are insane! How is it possible that forms like this even exist?!" I yelled at her. "You had the right numbers, I've got copies to prove it! So why are you carrying around fucked up forms?! You sent these to the vendors?!"
"I'm sorry!" she wailed. "I was having a really really bad day because my heart got broken! I was just totally blinded and I wrote the numbers down all crazy! I totally fixed it, you've got the right numbers, but I must have accidentally kept the wrong forms and sent them to the vendors!"
"Are you insane and incompetent?" I yelled. "You let something ridiculous like a crush get in the way of your job? You've made a mess with multiple vendors and you put the deadline for Sunrise Salon in jeopardy! You've damaged the reputation of the entire company! This is why designers shouldn't be allowed to send orders directly to vendors! It doesn't matter if I check off on the numbers if the designer fucks up like this!"
"You heartless monster!" Hokama yelled back at me. She was crying prettily, it looked like she'd spent hours purposefully crying in front of a mirror to practice her technique. "You just have no idea what it's like to be in love! You aren't even capable of feeling love! Any real woman would totally understand where I'm coming from!"
The anger that I was feeling about the mistake with the order forms skyrocketed as she said such nasty things to me. I felt like I was going to explode. "What?! Don't even try-"
A hand fell on my arm and started pulling me away. I looked up to see Date, grim-faced, pulling me towards a gap between two storage containers several yards away. Despite my telling him to stop several times, he continued tugging on my arm until we ran into the fence that was behind the containers.

"Try to calm down," he said, using a soothing voice. "You don't want to say anything that you'll regret later."
"Me say anything that I'll regret later?! She thinks she can say whatever she wants to me just because she spends too much time in front of a mirror! She has no right to talk to me like that! Just because I don't get a crush on every guy that walks by, and just because I haven't met the one man in the world that is my perfect match, does not mean that I'm not capable of love!" I shouted.
"Okay, okay. I know," Date said. "You're right. Hokama's on the attack because she feels vulnerable. But it isn't good to yell at her like that, it isn't helping to solve the problem. It's best for us to stay calm and work out what needs to be done to fix this mistake and get everything back on schedule. Ebihara will take care of reprimanding Hokama."
I took a deep breath and felt myself calming down. He was right. It was pathetic that Date had to tell me how to behave. "My temper has always been a problem. Thank you for interfering," I said.
"No problem," Date said. "I've got to look out for you. You're my best team member. Now, what is our plan of attack for this situation? We need to divide up the work and get moving on this."
"Right," I said. "First we need to make more copies of the correct forms and distribute them to the warehouse team…"
As I continued to go over my plan, I watched Date. At first he was listening to me closely, but soon his eyes began to dart around, his cheeks flushed pink and he began to shift back and forth, from one foot to the other. Did he have to go to the bathroom? Did he have ADD?
"Ah, okay," he interrupted me. "That all sounds great to start. Let's go back out and continue talking about this."
"Are you okay?" I asked, staring him up and down.
"Yeah," he said. "I...uh...just don't like closed in spaces."
I looked at the area between the fence and the backs of the storage containers. It was wider than a hallway and open to the sky. If he thought this was too closed, how did he manage in small rooms? It must kill him to go to the bathroom.

(Tuesday, June 12)

"Sera?" I spun around in my chair to see Date standing behind my work station.
"Yes," I said, only narrowing my eyes at him a little. He'd helped me out with the Sunrise Salon issue. I was going to go easier on him for a while, or until he pissed me off again.
"Do you think you could stay for a few minutes after work and talk to me?" he asked.
"Yes. I think I can," I said. Most of the office had already left for the day and the few people who remained were preparing to leave. I decided not to penalize him for making his request at the last minute. "This should only take a few more minutes and then I'll be available."
I spun back around to my desk to finish sorting through a stack of invoices. I heard Date pull a chair over and take a seat to wait for me. After I'd finished with the invoices and put them away, I spun back around to face him. "Let's start talking now."
"Okay," he said. I saw him take a breath. I wondered how many times he'd practiced this conversation. "There are two things that I want to accomplish. First of all, too much of the knowledge for our department is in your head. There are far too many things that only you know how to do. This means that you are overworked and most of the other employees are just skating by."
"This is true," I replied. Too much crucial knowledge was locked in my brain. What if I were to get into a car accident? Purchasing would shut down and then the company would go out of business. Everyone would lose their jobs.
"This department needs proper work instructions for each task, so that everyone can easily take care of their responsibilities. But I also want to do something else. It is very strange that Ms. Mihara insists that everything be done on paper. Everything needs to be transitioned to a computer program. People should be working with tablets and computers, not pencil and paper. I have decent programming skills and I noticed that you even have a couple of certifications. I think that while we make work instructions, we should also start building a program to handle all of the ordering, inventory and accounting," he explained.
"Ms. Mihara has always fought every effort to make this a paperless company," I said. "We would be wasting our time."
"Except, we've enrolled for two stalls in the Interior Fashion Trends Convention at the end of March. The theme is going to be Greener Today, Greener Tomorrow," he said. "If we can get this done before then, having a paperless system to add to our showcase at the convention might be the motivation that Ms. Mihara needs to make the right decision."
"And if we do it, it won't be necessary for her to hire a company to do it. We can just present what we've done and she can take it or leave it. No money lost," I said, my mind turning the idea over.
"Exactly," he said. "The real issue is time. You're already swamped. I was thinking that maybe we can start working some overtime, getting stuff out of your head, writing work instructions and programming. It'll be a lot of work, but as we write those work instructions we can transfer some of your work to other team members. It'll be quite the challenge. Are you interested?"
No one ever said that Akiko Sera was afraid of hard work. "Yes, I am. When do you want to start?"
"Tomorrow?"
"Perfect."