Career Tip #3 Make Friends at Work

We spend a significant amount of our time at work, so it helps if you can build positive relationships with those around you. There are several ways you can move a professional work relationship into the 'work friend' category. For instance, if you've had a few conversations with a colleague and you're getting along, try inviting them out for lunch or a coffee during your break. If you are invited to lunch, accept. Having even one or two friends at work can make any work environment that much more enjoyable.

It's 3:58 when Pacey arrives at Screen Play Video, eating an apple. He pushes the door so hard that the OPEN sign falls off and drops to the ground.

Glancing up from the computer, Joey watches as he hangs it back on the clip. "Arriving before the shift even begins, who are you and what have you done with Pacey?"

"Alas, it is me, flesh and blood. Don't be alarmed."

"No detention today?" Joey says with raised eyebrows.

Shaking his head, Pacey replies, "No. I summoned my suppressed academic genius and restrained all troublesome traits so that I could be on time today and you would have zero cause to yell at me."

"I'll probably still yell at some point," Joey confesses.

"I would expect nothing less."

After collecting his vest and pulling it over his bowling shirt, Pacey reads through the list of tasks to complete for the shift. His eyebrows twitch up and down as he studies the odd jobs they've been delegated.

He glances at the clock. "It's 4:02 and you've already crossed a quarter of these out."

"I'm efficient," she says, shrugging.

He shakes his head and drops the list. "You're a kiss-ass".

Joey puckers her lips, gives him the finger, and asks, "How was your date with the happy couple?"

"Not as terrible as expected. I displayed my golfing prowess, but unfortunately, that Lindley girl is a regular Greg Norman, and she beat me. You should have come. I got a hole-in-one into the pirate's treasure chest and won a free soda." His voice lowers, "and, between you and me, I'm not entirely sure the happy couple is all that happy."

Eyebrows knitted, Joey asks, "What makes you say that?"

"It seems obvious to me, but I'm not sure they've realized it just yet."

"Realized what?"

"They're looking for different things. Dawson is a teenager, blinded by an exotic entrant into his perfectly curated world. He puts her on an impossibly high pedestal, but forgets that she is, for the better part, just a regular female who happens to have breasts."

"And what does Jen want?" she asks.

"Jen just wants a friend. But the closest thing she has to a connection since arriving in Capeside is Dawson's testosterone-fueled attentions."

Joey nods. "She asked me to come around to watch movies with her. Specifically, Non-Dawson approved movies."

"Are you going to go?" His eyes brighten.

"I said yes."

Pacey smiles. "Good. I think, despite your generally irritable disposition, you two might just get along."

"Well, considering I have barely been invited by Dawson to a movie night, or even to hang out, since they began dating, I could do with some human interaction."

"I think you'll find that I am, in fact, a human." Pacey beats his chest like Tarzan.

She stifles an eye roll. "The jury's out on that one. And forced interaction doesn't count."

He scoffs. "Forced. Hardly. I get in the door, and you're all how did the date go? Like we're besties. Admit it, Josephine, we're work pals."

"This is only our fourth shift together."

"Exactly, and look at our rapport! I'm even driving you home tonight. That's just the kind of thing that work pals do for each other," he baits her.

A family walks through the door. Joey glares at Pacey. She isn't prepared to discuss the drive home yet, because she isn't ready to let her mind even wander to that particular part of the evening.

"Have you brought your study materials, pal ?"

He kicks at his backpack. "All loaded up."

"Let's get the jobs all done and we can study after eight when things quiet down."

"Roger that."

If Pacey brought his novel today, he doesn't open it. He doesn't even take his usual lengthy "bathroom breaks" where he sits in the back office and doodles mustaches on glossy magazine photos. He is proactive and helpful. When an elderly gentleman comes in to find a long-lost title, Pacey goes out of his way to call other video stores until he locates a copy two cities away.

The busy time, from five to seven, disappears in a flurry while Pacey works the register and Joey takes returns. Between customers, they chat and bicker and Pacey teaches her about special order requests and then he physically removes a belligerent customer refusing to pay a late fee.

Gradually, bodies disappear from the aisles. Back to their warm houses with their videos and popcorn while Joey and Pacey stay behind under fluorescent lighting.

When they're finally eating their dinner of sandwiches out of cling film, Joey watches him with a speculative gaze.

"You're awfully spry today. I wouldn't go so far as to say model employee, but it's heading in that direction," Joey remarks, disbelief in her tone.

"That I am," Pacey says, making a face at the bite of his meal and pulling apart the bread for closer inspection.

"Would it have anything to do with our conversation on Saturday?"

He fishes the offending item from his sandwich and throws it in the trash. "Potentially."

Joey's mouth shifts into a soft smile.

"No need to gloat."

"I'm not gloating."

"Your smug smile says otherwise."

Joey bites her sandwich to cover the smirk.

"You need to understand that Dawson let me do exactly what I wanted here. Which was, for the most part, nothing," Pacey says.

"Why? Wouldn't that just give him a greater workload?"

"Yes, but that's precisely what he wants, right? He loves any situation where he has the opportunity to look better. By letting me slack off, he can pat himself on the back about his own stellar work ethic, you know? So I was getting away with it. It was easy, for me and for him."

Joey sits back, defensive. "Dawson's not a bad guy."

"I know that. He's my friend, but you've gotta admit, he needs to be the good guy and when he hangs around me; he gets to be."

"So I'm not so terrible for yelling at you to stop slacking off?"

"Oh, you're still terrible." He jokes.

Joey shakes her head, balls up the clingfilm and throws it at him. "Do you miss Dawson?"

"Working with him?" Pacey asks.

"Yeah, but also just having him around. I kind of feel as though I'm on my own for the first time. We used to hang out most nights, but now he's with Jen all the time."

"It's the nature of the new relationship. Unfortunately, all previous companions are tossed to the side in pursuit of love. We're in this boat together."

"Well, this boat sucks."

"That it does."

Joey is laminating a new video card in the back office when Pacey bursts through the door.

"You're not going to believe who is currently scanning through New Releases."

She barely glances up. "Elvis, back from the dead, and he's come to rescue me from the lobotomy that is working in a video store."

Pacey shakes his head. "Guess again."

She glares at him.

"Fine, I'll tell you, but promise me you won't freak out."

"Just spit it out before I smack it out of you."

"Aaron Charleston," he grins, wide and shit-eating.

Joey freezes, immobilized by the consequences of her own falsehoods.

"Your confessed crush in the flesh. What will little Joey Potter do?" he wiggles his eyebrows.

She turns back to the laminator. "Joey Potter is laminating. You're on the register, you deal with him."

Pacey shakes his head vehemently.

"Call me a matchmaker. He's all yours."

"What if I don't want him?"

"As if! You were practically swooning over him last week." He nudges her, "Go on."

Joey bites the inside of her mouth. "I changed my mind. You're right about him. He's not my type."

"Stop trying to get out of this. Go out there and serve your man."

"I'm not going out there," she says fiercely.

He chuckles. " I'm not going out there."

The bell on the counter rings.

Joey twitches. Pacey doesn't move a muscle. They're in a Western, waiting to see who will draw the gun first.

The bell rings again.

"The question is, can you, perfectionist extraordinaire, allow dissatisfactory customer service on your shift? I doubt it," he raises his eyebrows.

The laminated card drops from Joey's hand and she whips a pointed index finger into his face. "I'm going to make you pay for this, Witter."

He responds by taking a step towards her, reaching out, pinching the fabric on her shoulders and adjusting her vest so that the left side aligns with the right. Occupying her space, he uses the back of his hand to brush invisible crumbs from the material.

Joey freezes, eyes following his movements. Her finger drops.

It started with a devious grin plastered across Pacey's face, but somewhere between the proximity and the faux grooming, his smile disappears and his breathing changes ever so slightly.

He invades her senses when he's this close. There is nowhere to run.

"There, now you look acceptable," his voice cracks and he takes an exaggerated step backward.

The floor is where Joey is focused, inspecting the knots in the wood grain. Dealing with Aaron Charleston is more manageable than Pacey Witter, so Joey doesn't hesitate to leave him beside the laminator and the stack of cards.

"Hey, sorry about the delay. Video-related emergency back there," she forces a smile at a waiting Aaron who hands her Jumanji with his rental card resting on top.

He flashes impeccably straight teeth. "No problems."

Joey scans the video, enters his number, all at record speed. Her heart is still hammering in her chest, and it has nothing to do with Aaron.

"Hey, you go to Capeside High, right?" he asks, a perfect flop of blonde fringe hanging over his eye, as though it's choreographed.

"Uh-huh," she nods. "That'll be two dollars."

He hands over a five and justifies his selection. "This is for my little brother, not me."

"Sure," Joey drops the change on the counter.

"Not that Jumanji isn't great, but I'm babysitting, so entertainment is more important than movie choice."

"I can imagine," says Joey, delivering her customer service smile. The one that announces that this transaction is over.

Aaron doesn't collect the change, or leave.

Joey shifts her weight between feet.

"Have you worked here long?" He asks.

"This is my second week."

"Well," he points to her vest, "you look like a pro. No one would guess you're new."

She gives him a strained smile. "Um, thanks."

He reaches up to take the video. "Bye."

Joey waves awkwardly until he leaves.

"Wow," says Pacey, appearing beside her like magic. He performs a slow clap while watching Aaron walk down the street. "That was riveting! The mating rituals of teenagers continue to baffle me."

Joey elbows him in the ribs and he winces. "You are a jackass, forcing me out here."

"You look like a pro ? If only he knew the training it took to get you to this level. Seriously, he was killing it with the compliments."

"Were you watching?"

Spinning around, he ducks behind the curtain to the storeroom and pops his head out, "If I stand just so," his head disappears, but his voice continues, "I can see everything, but the customer cannot see me. 'Tis magic."

"'Tis voyeurism, you creep." Joey's eyes flame.

Pacey reappears. "Well, if anything, that little interaction has proved to me two things."

"And what is that?"

"One. That, as predicted, Aaron Charleston is a complete and utter bore. His conversational skills - abysmal. Have you worked here long? Please!"

"He was making small talk as customary in a service setting."

"And number two. You, Miss Potter, were lying."

Joey blinks rapidly. "Lying?"

"Yes. You claimed to lust over that Jonathan Taylor Thomas knockoff, but now that I've seen your interaction in the flesh. I smell a rat."

"It was literally two minutes."

"I saw none of the classic Joey Potter flirting signs."

"And what are those?"

"The hair tucking with the simultaneous downward glance. Throw in a nibble on your bottom lip and you've found yourself true love."

Joey picks up a stapler. "Sometimes, I fantasize about stapling a video card to your head."

Pacey holds up his finger. "Oh, I forgot. Threats. Another of Joey Potter's love languages. Remember when you were, like, thirteen and hopelessly crushing on Matthew Antonelli? You always used to tease and threaten him with bodily harm."

Joey doesn't threaten Pacey again. She takes a calming breath. "Like your flirting techniques are any better!"

"Me?"

"Yes. You. Flirting 101 with Pacey Witter. Long, lusty stares and coming up with creative ways to encourage physical contact."

"That's hardly patented. I don't think it's strange to want to be close to someone you like."

Joey's eyes inexplicably dart to the back office, reliving the feeling of his proximity by the laminator. Following her eye line, Pacey exits the shared space behind the counter, collecting some returns and wandering into the aisles.

"All I'm saying is that you don't actually like him, do you? You were just saying that, so I would drop the Dawson thing, right?"

Joey flops onto the stool. "I don't like him. I don't like anyone. I just wanted you to let up on the Dawson and Joey narrative."

All Joey can see are Pacey's eyes over the top of the aisle.

"Okay. Fine. I'll drop it."

Joey raises an eyebrow. "Wow. That was a little too easy."

"Well, I figured I better be nice to you, seeing as you're about to tutor me."

Joey laughs, "You figured right."

In between customers, Joey and Pacey go over the formation of ions and ionic compounds. The keyboard is moved to the side, and the desk becomes Pacey's workspace. Joey sits on it, beside his workbook, her legs swaying to and fro. If a question is too difficult, it leaves Pacey in a perfect position to poke the pencil's eraser into her leg. If Pacey doesn't answer correctly, it leaves Joey in a perfect position to poke him right back with the toe of her Keds.

Pacey takes a break to scan The Net for a man who confesses his unconditional love for Sandra Bullock.

They revise acid-based reactions.

Joey jumps off the desk to check out Mallrats for some rowdy teenagers.

Somewhere around Joey quizzing Pacey about the formula for ammonium nitrate, Pacey's head hits the textbook, his cheek squished against the text.

"I'm tapping out," his lips graze the paper.

"You big baby, we haven't even done my customized quiz yet."

"Never have two more spine-chilling words shared a sentence."

"Fine, but on Thursday, we need to start with the quiz."

"Goodie!" He lifts his head. "I'll be sure to pencil in detention that day!"

Joey collects the detritus of their study and jumps down from the desk. Somehow, 9 pm had been and gone without their knowledge.

Pacey screws his nose up at the clock. "It's a shame we don't get overtime."

"Considering we were studying, not working, I think we can write this one off."

She'd been in the Witter Wagoneer before, many times. It had the familiarity of childhood in the way the family car is used to taxi kids to various birthday parties and sports events. Pacey, Joey, and Dawson would line the back seat and play rock, paper, scissors until someone would lose and Joey would punch Pacey.

It always ended with Joey punching Pacey.

The Wagoneer was a perfectly preserved time capsule of childhood; tan leather interior, three-speed automatic, the lingering smell of a pack of Newports that Pacey's mom used to smoke every day.

So there was nothing that should surprise her about the journey home in his family's Jeep. It takes precisely five minutes to get from Screen Play Video to Joey's house. All she needs to do is count to sixty, five times.

Achievable. Quick. Easy.

But Joey sits in the passenger seat and Pacey can't start the car. She has already counted to sixty, four times and they haven't moved from the parking space. Each time Pacey hits the key, the engine sputters and coughs and peters out to silence.

"Is it the battery?" Joey asks.

He hits the key again, and it has less cough than before, like a half-hearted throat clear.

"If it was the battery, I wouldn't have headlights," he flicks them on and off, "or interior lights."

"So what is it?"

Pacey shrugs and pops the hood. "Let's investigate."

Pressing her head against the headrest, Joey breathes deeply before unclipping her seatbelt to follow him.

Together they stare at the engine. Joey does not know exactly what she is looking at. Wires and fans and tubes are all tangled together, poorly illuminated by the streetlight.

"Is your mechanical prowess as good as your golf prowess?" Joey asks.

Pacey fishes a torch from the glove box and hands it to her while he jiggles some wires. "I can change a tire, if that's what you're asking."

"That is not what I'm asking. Should we call triple A?"

She fumbles with the torch.

"Let me look at it first. Hold the light still."

The beam illuminates the foreign items and Pacey focuses his attention on one of them, pulling off wires, reconnecting them. His body is bent over, stretching. Joey can't help but look. He's so much taller and broader than he used to be. The shirt rides up, revealing a sliver of his bare back.

"You're going to make it worse," she warns, mesmerized by the foreign skin.

"Where is your trust, Potter?"

"Trust for you?"

Pacey disappears to the trunk, returning with a spanner and a rag. With the rag he wipes down some wires, removing a white corrosion that covers them. Then, he taps a metal cylinder with the spanner.

"Seriously. You're just randomly hitting stuff? I'll unlock the store and call triple A," she says.

He ignores her.

Glancing down the street, there are no cars, nothing is open. It's a Tuesday night in Capeside. Everyone is at home, watching the television or doing their homework. Pacey and Joey are the only ones left in the world.

"Can you hit the key?" he says, still under the hood.

Joey hands him the torch and walks to the driver's side. The Wagoneer starts on the first turn, a familiar V8 rumble. Pacey scrambles out and closes the hood with a bang.

Her mouth drops.

"Trust is important in a friendship, Josephine." A smug smile crosses his face and he wipes his hands on the rag.

"What was wrong with it?"

"Starter motor, it needs replacing. Sometimes cleaning the wires and a good tap will give it a second life. It's been a problem for years."

"So you're telling me this might happen again? You're my ride. You're supposed to be reliable."

They climb back inside. Pacey waits for Joey to buckle her seatbelt, and pulls out from the parking space.

"Relax, the Wagoneer will get you where you need to go."

Joey grunts, begins the count to sixty in her head, but Pacey interrupts.

"You know, your mom was the one that helped us the first time this car wouldn't start."

Whipping her head to face him, Joey looks at Pacey, noticing a smear of grease above his right eyebrow. "What?"

"My mom was picking me up from my first day of second grade. You know, when all the moms used to park in a long line that ran around the block to collect all the little kids?"

Joey nods.

"My mom got to the front of the line and I jumped inside. My teacher wanted a word with her because I must have been distracting kids in class, or causing chaos, so she shut off the engine. When she was done listening to the report of my ill behavior, the car wouldn't start. My mom didn't even know where the hood pull was, but your mom, and you, were parked behind. Lilly came out and helped. She showed my mom how to check the major problems; the battery, spark plugs. I jumped out to watch the action and remember her cleaning the corroded wires of the starter motor with an old shirt of my dad's from the trunk. Then, she tapped it with her keys."

Joey listens intently as Pacey drives past the gas station, its neon lights impossibly bright.

"I remember that day," she says with surprise as the memory floats back. "You and I watched, and then we waited on the grass -"

"And we ate Hubba Bubba tape," Pacey finishes her sentence.

Her mouth drops as she recalls the moment, once lost, then hazy, now in perfect clarity. "Grape flavor!"

Pacey laughs. "Grape is the best flavor."

"I vaguely recall we ended up in a fight on that grass. I remember being physically separated."

Pacey nods knowingly. "You asked for a piece and I snapped your finger in the dispenser. Naturally, you punched me and it became a brawl."

Joey laughs, and a tear escapes down her cheek, a joyful one. It's not every day that she gets a new memory of her mother. She swipes it away. "So you're saying your mechanical prowess is courtesy of my mom?"

"Exactly."

"Do you remember anything else about her?" Joey doesn't normally ask people this question, but he cracked a door and now she wants to walk through it.

Pacey thinks for a moment and chuckles. Joey watches him in rapt fascination.

"Your mom once slapped my dad."

" What?"

"I watched it happen. It was a thing of such beauty, honestly, I've never seen anything quite like it."

"What happened?"

He blinks the memory back. "I don't really know. I was young, maybe eight or nine. In the grocery store with my dad, we were getting food for Doug's birthday. They were talking in the aisle. I wasn't really listening. Next thing I know, she slapped him, called him an asshole, and walked away."

"I wonder what he did?" Joey asks, still slack-jawed.

"Whatever it was, I'm sure he deserved it. When we got back in the cruiser he made me promise to never tell anyone what I saw or he'd slap me harder than she did."

"I can't believe it," Joey says.

"I can. A feisty Potter woman standing up to someone who wronged them. Honestly, he's lucky he only got a slap."

Joey smiles.

"The next time I saw you, I remember being a little scared, like maybe you would do the same."

"Sounds like a legitimate fear," she stares out the windshield.

"Other than that, I just remember her feeding us all. Food at the Ice House, food at your place. At my house, asking for a snack would incite terror. At yours, it was presented before you even asked. I loved going to your place as a kid. Your mom made it warm."

In the passing streetlights, she snatches a glance at him. "When I think of my childhood, I usually think of Dawson. Sometimes I forget you were always there in the background, pissing me off."

A silence sits between them.

"I was there." He says finally, voice low.

Pulling down Joey's driveway, headlights bleach the darkness before them. The gravel beneath the Jeep's tires pops and cracks as the car slows to a gentle stop. The porch light is left on for her. Joey stares at it, realizing she didn't count to sixty, five times on the way home. She didn't even get to ten.

"See, it wasn't that bad," Pacey says, putting the car into park.

"What?"

"Me driving you. It was hardly worth quitting over."

In the dim interior, Joey reaches behind for her backpack, locates it, and drags it onto her lap. Then she let their eyes meet, just for a moment.

"You have grease on your face," she says. Pacey wipes his face with open palms.

Joey giggles when he misses, tucking her hair behind her ear, biting at her lip. "Above your eyebrow."

He stares at her for a couple of seconds, faces forward, and wipes his face again.

"The other one!" she says.

Her hand rises from its resting place on the backpack, an inch or two, as though she might just reach out and swipe at the mark. Paceys' eyes follow the almost-movement. Bringing it back down, Joey balls her fingers into a fist so tight her nails dig into the skin.

"Thanks for the ride, Pace," she says, and he pulls the rearview mirror down to find the offending grease.

"Thanks for the tutoring, Jo." He nods his head as she leaves the vehicle. Joey walks to the front door, illuminated by his headlights, unlocks the door, and enters.

The Wagoneer doesn't drive away until she's safely inside.