Fly by Night

By

Annette Rasmussen

Fly by Night, a strange company that not everyone knows about or should. Why? Is it illegal? Is it immoral? Is it imaginary? You judge.

Quietly we walk around the perimeters of the company and sneak a peek between the mini-blinds - gauche you say? Perhaps but we are not talking your living room here, okay? We are talking about a corporation. A corporation where anything flies as long as it fits the company’s mission statement, which is Fly by Night. Mini blinds work just fine.

Through the blinds we see Sylvia Fisch typing madly away at her keyboard. Her eyes are alight… with the passion of her work? With the peaking of oxycontin? With the sexual tremors left over from flirting shamefully with Gordon Bleu? It does not matter. It only matters that for a few moments she is happy at her work even if she in not happy because of her work.

Her supervisor Sally Phane walks by.

“Hmm, Sylvia? Feverishly at work?” Sally raises her eyebrows as if to prove she is not a victim of botox but Sylvia is unimpressed. She smirks briefly but lets the sly smile shift slowly into the corporate plastic face Sally prefers.

“Yes,” she says. Yes is always a good thing to say to a supervisor or really anyone Sylvia discovered many years ago when still an intern in this strange profession. She had spent many a years under the desk showing her work ethic. No, for God’s sake, she was not blowing anything but steam as she squatted under desks polishing the shoes of those who liked their shoes polished. Luckily now it is a new day and that sort of subservient toad behavior is no longer popular. The toad now said “Whassup” and kept its sticky fly- seeking tongue inside its mouth if only so it could smile wider to look younger. The toad was now the king (oops, Queen) of the lily-pad in a ‘not really’ sort of way.

The bottom line? You can’t very well take the power from your supervisor when the supervisor has no power to begin with. Not in this litigious ‘my supervisor is harassing me’ new day.

Sylvia knows Sally would not risk her job to confront her. Sylvia has the power but what power is this? Can she fire Sally? No. Can she tell Sally that skin toned cover-up does not work on pimples that are bleeding? Not likely. Can she tell Sally what is really on her mind?

No, this was not reality anymore than acting like you’ve been abandoned on some island eating bugs with a zillion TV cameras in your face is. Sylvia takes a moment to imagine how she would look on camera and she cheers up. She knows her teeth brightening toothpaste was reworking ten years of her mistaken notion that smoking looked cool. She smiles bigger for Sally. No, she will not tell her the truth. Sylvia will not tell her that this job is sucking the last viable brain cell from her frontal lobes. She will tell Sally what Sally wants to hear because the real goal of this encounter is to get it over with as quickly as possible with as little damage as possible.

“I AM working feverishly because I AM so EXCITED about our new project. Let’s do lunch and I’ll tell you all about my ideas.”

Sally’s face blanches. Sylvia smirks again in spite of her super hero efforts to mold it into plastic blank-face. One thing supervisors don’t like is going to lunch with people they can’t gossip with and you can’t gossip with your subordinates- not if you want to keep any semblance of control. Plus, Sylvia scores big with her display of both work ethic and devotion. She is looking good and she knows it. Where is Jeff Probst and his cameras when you need them? Sylvia’s mind begins racing. Maybe she should ditch the Survivor fantasy and go with Apprentice. After all, both shows encouraged cleavage.

And is Sally looking at her cleavage? Sylvia squirms. With fear? With disgust? With anticipation? With irritable bowel syndrome? She adjusts her underwire bra.

“Sexual harassment is against the law,” Sally says, cleverly turning the tables so that Sylvia can only sit gaping at her, which is not a good look.

“What the…” she finally says, in a vain recovery attempt. But it is too late.

Sally Phane has the power again.

Drat. Maybe that’s why Sally is the supervisor. Sylvia Fisch lowers her eyes and begins again pecking away at her computer. After all, work is called work for a reason.