"Damn, I'm late" I thought to myself as I peeled into the parking lot of the 3 building campus that is the biopharmaceutical company that I call home 40 hours a week. It was 9 am and even though we don't have a set time most of my co-workers are in the office by 8 am. I groggily got of the car and grabbed my workbag. "Damn, I forgot my work badge at home." This means that I can't sneak in through the employee entrance at the side of the building and now I'll have to grab a loaner badge from Joanne at the front desk.
As I'm dragging my feet towards the front entrance, my headache starts to get worse as if somebody was jackhammering inside trying to get out of my skull. I started to regret the drinks that I had yesterday. The icing on the cake for this already forgettable morning is that I have my annual review scheduled for today with my boss Melissa and I had a sneaky suspicion that I wasn't going to get a gold star. In my humble opinion, I'm really good at what I do as a Production Planner but I have been in several internal conflicts recently including a couple of spats with the Materials Manager that I can't stand. She hasn't confronted me about these issues yet but I can tell from the looks that I've been getting that she was uncomfortable with these situations. At least it was Friday, so I just need to get through the next few hours and then I have a weekend to chill out and recover.
As I enter the lobby, I immediately noticed Joanne, the office manager, looking at me disapprovingly. At first, I was going to shrug off her look as she's seen other employees in a lot worse shape than me after a long night. However, I quickly realized that one of our clients, David, was waiting in the lobby. David is from one of the big pharmaceutical companies that we partnered with on developing some drugs. David's a nice guy but definitely out there as a Doc Brown absent-minded scientist type.
I gave him an embarrassed smile and a morning nod and quickly grabbed the loaner badge from Joanne.
"Rough night, huh?" David asked me, with a knowing smile of somebody who's been there before. He stood up and met me half-way in the lobby.
"Yeah, Tacos and Tequila, but I went a little too light on the tacos." I replied and firmly placed my hand into his.
As David pulled away, I noticed that he had slipped something into my hands. As unassuming as I possibly could be in this hung-over state, I opened up my hand and glanced at two bright pink pills with no markings in my palm. These pills certainly didn't look like any kind of aspirin that I have ever seen before.
David then whispered to me, "take these and thank me later." And then he gave me a sly smile. Before I could reply, one of the Project Managers came out and whisked him away to whatever important meeting that they both needed to be in.
Well, David had a dual doctorate in Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Engineering so if he's telling me to take the pills, then down the hatch these will go. I grabbed some water from the water cooler in the main lobby and gulped down both pills with a single swig of water.
I felt a strange sensation come over me as my headache went away immediately, but my vision was beginning to be covered by a pink translucent tint. I opened and closed my eyes to see if I was imagining something, but the pink tint remained. As I glanced around the lobby, I noticed that Joanne was radiating a darker pink hue than the rest of the lobby which was strange. I realized that this might have been a side effect of taking these pills but obviously I had no bottle or even a name of the drug to look into possible side effects. Even though I preferred this pink tint over that jackhammer of a headache, I was more than slightly worried of the long term effect that this could have on me. I might have to go hunt down David before the end of today to find out what the hell is going on with me.
As I contemplated the possible side effects of this pink pill, Joanne loudly cleared her throat. This abruptly pulled me out of my thoughts and I realized that I had definitely overstayed my welcome in the lobby. As she impatiently glared at me, she said "Johnny, it was nice seeing you but I recommend you to get a move on as I'm sure that there are certain people that need your attention today." In other words, get your hung-over ass out of the lobby before anybody else sees you. Once she was done with this command, she used her pointer finger and reminded me of which door that I needed to go out of pronto.
I put my head down and thought to myself, she needs to get that stick out of her ass and go fuck herself so she could loosen up.
As if she was on cue, Joanne immediately got up from her desk and briskly strode over to the bathrooms in the lobby. She was trying to be inconspicuous but I could see her right arm reaching for her crotch.
Well, that was weird.
As I was walking to my desk, I caught somebody from the corner of my eye moving towards me. I could feel the my heart drop as it was none other than Nicki. Nicki was on the accounting team and to say the least I wasn't a fan of her. I'm pretty sure she felt the same way. She was around my age in her mid-20's and she would be good looking if she didn't cake on the make-up. In fact, she looked like the Latina version of Peg Bundy with her propensity for push-up bras and walking awkwardly (almost shuffling along) in high-heels. I wonder if she liked Bon-Bon's?!? She caught me as I dropped my workbag at my desk.
She whispered through clenched teeth, "I've booked a conference room and we need to go over some issues with the costs you assigned to some of the production plans."
Great, I thought. The hits just keep on coming.