Patricia (Pat) Tollens\u2019 first week in Boghadair had begun less than smoothly.\u00a0 Her first encounter with her new supervisor could best be described as a train wreck.\u00a0 Tanner Carrero had encountered her when she attempted to hike in the mountains.\u00a0 But instead, he had to rescue her from a marauding grizzly bear that she had incited by leaving her bear transponder in her car.\u00a0 Things had started poorly.\u00a0 And then they got worse.<\/p>\n
From her point of view Tanner was a hopeless throwback to the stone-age patriarchy that no longer existed in her world.\u00a0 Back at UC Berkeley if he had yelled at her the way he did on that trail, she would have had him brought up on charges; verbal assault, hate speech, and any number of micro-aggressions.\u00a0 In fact, he pretended that she was the one at fault.<\/p>\n
And now she had to work for this caveman.\u00a0 She called up her advisor at Berkeley and requested that a grievance be opened up against Carrero by the school.\u00a0 But she was advised that Typhon Industries didn\u2019t work that way.\u00a0 In fact, they didn\u2019t even have an HR department.\u00a0 They had something called \u201cPersonnel\u201d and basically, they handled payroll and insurance paperwork and handed complaints over to local management.\u00a0 If she wanted to lodge a protest, she\u2019d have to talk to Carrero\u2019s manager.\u00a0 When she attempted this, she found an even older, more sexist man than Carrero who told her to stop making trouble or she\u2019d be sent back to California by the next plane.\u00a0 And just to make things completely transparent she was cc\u2019d on an e-mail from his boss to Carrero telling him what she had done and recommending he straighten her out right away or send her packing.\u00a0 Pretty bad.<\/p>\n
So, on her first day of work she showed up at the small frame building that housed the survey team.\u00a0 There was an office list and she found Tanner\u2019s name and walked down the corridor to that room and saw him setting at one of the desks and approached with the bleakest expression that her face could produce short of actually being caught by a grizzly bear.<\/p>\n
Tanner was sitting working on a spreadsheet but caught sight of Pat as she approached his cubicle.\u00a0 His expression turned to a mixture of anxiety and embarrassment.\u00a0 He had never liked \u201csupervising\u201d people.\u00a0 He was an \u201cindividual contributor\u201d down to his boots.\u00a0 There was nothing he hated more than \u201conboarding\u201d employees.\u00a0 And now he had a problem that threatened to drag him into a world of paperwork.\u00a0 Terminating an intern sounded like a nightmare of paperwork and he would avoid it by almost any means possible.<\/p>\n
Tanner had booked a conference room for her first day to allow her to come up quickly to speed on the project by working one-on-one with him.\u00a0 He asked her to follow him to the conference room and they sat down opposite each other at a small conference table.<\/p>\n
Tanner coughed nervously and started, \u201cMs. Tollens, we\u2019ve started off badly but we can move past the problems we\u2019ve had if we concentrate on the work at hand.\u00a0 My boss is sort of upset.\u00a0 He\u2019s probably more upset with me than with you but we have to show him that we can work together efficiently and hit our deliverables on the schedule.\u00a0 If you think we can work together then I\u2019m going to meet you in the middle.\u00a0 But if you feel that I\u2019m as bad a person as you indicated in your grievance then we should end this today and not waste any more of your time or this company\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n
He stopped talking and waited for her reply.\u00a0 Pat had listened with interest to his words.\u00a0 Apparently, he wasn\u2019t the monster she had assumed.\u00a0 He sounded almost reasonable; confused but almost reasonable.\u00a0 She thought, \u201cMaybe this won\u2019t be horrible.\u201d\u00a0 She wanted badly to get Typhon Industries on her resume.\u00a0 Everyone in the mining industry knew they were light-years ahead of the competition.\u00a0 She had heard they weren\u2019t a progressive company but this Carrero guy might be honestly trying to work with her.\u00a0 She decided to give it a try.\u00a0 She said, \u201cI think we can work together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tanner let out a sigh and managed a half smile, \u201cGood.\u00a0 I\u2019d like to have you go over our field work manual today and we can break that up by having you begin to attend the project meetings so you can meet the team and become familiar with the way we work.\u00a0 In the afternoon I\u2019ll meet back here with you to go over a field study I have planned for tomorrow.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ll provide you with the itinerary and also the gear you\u2019ll need.\u00a0 We\u2019ll take three other interns along to get them trained too.\u00a0 They\u2019ll be at the meeting today so you can get to know them too.\u00a0 The four of you may find some benefit to spending some time together to help acclimate yourselves to a new locale together.\u201d\u00a0 Pat nodded her head and said, \u201cThat sounds good.\u00a0 Is there a laptop I\u2019ll be using?\u00a0 I\u2019d like to take notes on the manual and figure out your e-mail system and other onboarding tasks.\u201d\u00a0 He said, \u201cSure, it\u2019s the one on that side of the table.\u00a0 There\u2019s a folder with the onboarding information, including initial passwords and other IS gobbledygook.\u201d\u00a0 She looked a little anxious when he used the term gobbledygook but she didn\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n
And so, they began.\u00a0 Maybe not a ball of fire, not \u201cAstaire and Rogers\u201d but no one had been brought up on charges and neither of them had raised their voices a decibel over cubicle normal.\u00a0 A new beginning!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Patricia (Pat) Tollens\u2019 first week in Boghadair had begun less than smoothly.\u00a0 Her first encounter with her new supervisor could best be described as a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,1289,1263,237,4,242],"tags":[1290,265,3675],"class_list":["post-33452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-fiction-by-me","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-book-reviews","tag-my-fiction","tag-science-fiction","tag-yellowstone"],"yoast_head":"\n