Swamped At The Office
By DJ Cline
Note: This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to real people, places or events is entirely coincidental. So get over yourself. Text from DJCline.com
Betty Button was having flashbacks. She was back in the swamp fighting for her life. Text from DJCline.com
She woke up in cold sweat in front of her laptop at 6:00 AM in her pre-foreclosure condo. Nowah Guy had sent an e-mail with the subject line: “Back 2 Swamp?” Text from DJCline.com
Betty Button was a marketing writer, a public relations flack, and a spin-doctor for Netrosonics. Her job was to put a good face on disaster and she was earning every penny. She had fallen asleep in front of her computer trying to write a press release disguised as a personal blog that had to be posted by 9:00 AM. How did she get into this mess? Text from DJCline.com
During the dotcom boom, Netrosonics opened a branch office in San Banos. They bought companies, fired the employees and then sat on their intellectual property until somebody had to pay for it. They spent more money on lawyers than engineers. They paid Betty to make them look like an obscure high tech company and upstanding corporate citizen. In the current post-collapse business climate she could sadly brag that her bosses weren’t convicted of anything…yet. Text from DJCline.com
Her job would have been easy if she just had to sweet talk a few reporters and buy ads in their newspapers or commercial time on a few TV stations. Instead she had to be nice to hundreds of people online she had absolutely no control over. She could refuse them access and they would publish anyway. Text from DJCline.com
She needed her job. She needed the health insurance. She had a pre-existing condition. She was sure she got cancer working in the Swamp. Text from DJCline.com
The Swamp was the nickname for the old Cianti campus in Dumbarton, a small city built on a dump over a marsh in San Francisco Bay. Cianti was a competitor to Netrosonics that lost a huge legal battle resulting in their demise. Betty was chief spin-doctor at Cianti as they went down in flames. When it was over Netrosonics did the Machiavellian thing and hired her, mainly to keep her silence. A few weeks after she started her new job she was diagnosed and fought for her life.
As part of the legal victory Netrosonics got the Cianti headquarters in Dumbarton. They were moving from their offices in San Banos to the Swamp. Betty would lose her corner office overlooking the big box hardware store. She would no longer get to see former Netrosonics employees milling around with other day laborers looking for work.
Instead she would most likely have a cubicle that stank from the toxic garbage rotting under the building and venting fumes into the building. When she worked at Cianti, she would come home and her cat would sniff her clothes and make pawing motions like she was trying to bury something in her litter box. When she started at Netrosonics she had to buy an entirely new wardrobe. Text from DJCline.com
Unless she found another job, she was going back to the Swamp. She was afraid of going through cancer treatment again. She looked at Nowah Guy’s message. Maybe someone she thought was a problem might be her solution. Text from DJCline.com
Copyright 2010 DJ Cline All rights reserved.
Posted by dj in Blumbers, Commentary, Fiction []