Getaway Girls New Orleans...random nonsense & bits of fiction by Deirdre H. Gage

DISCLAIMER: This has zero to do with my book, New Orleans, flesh-eating scavengers or anything remotely supernatural. This is the result of me sitting through a particularly nonriveting meeting last week at work. But rest assured, there's suspense and a certain degree of horror. Because conference calls? Pretty scary stuff.

The following is a transcript of a monthly team meeting. The team in Texas is gathered in one conference room, speaking via Webex call to the team in Chicago.

Lisa (on the phone): Blah, blah, blah (introduces meeting). So you need to enter the PDR in the GPS Blue and ACA and DOA …and a bunch of other acronyms everyone pretends to understand.

Random lady in orange sweater sitting in the back of the room: PDR? What’s PDR? Who said that?

Laura: (leaning over table to address Random lady in orange): We’re on mute; they can’t hear you.

Random lady in orange: I’m taking notes for someone, I need to know.

Laura: (sighs, unmutes speaker)

Random lady in orange: What’s PDR?

Laura(muttering): they can’t hear you if you are talking from the back of the room. You need to sit near a speaker.

Random lady in orange: (shouting) WHO SAID THAT? WHAT’S PDR?

Someone on the other end of the phone: random shuffling of papers, no one answer RLIO, who furrows brow.

Elisabeth: blah, blah, blah (talks about entering timesheets)

RLIO: HOW DO YOU SPELL YOUR LAST NAME?

Elisabeth: (surprised) Spells name.

RLIO: WAS THAT A ‘U’?

Laura: (shaking her head): Yes. It was a ‘U’.

Mary: Blah, blah, blah (talks about coding time and expenses).

RLIO: WAS THAT A ‘P’ CODE OR A ‘Z’ CODE? Z LIKE ZEBRA?

Mary (wearily): A ‘Z’ code.

RLIO: HOW DO YOU SPELL YOUR LAST NAME?

Mary: (looking across the room at RLIO, who is sitting roughly twenty feet away): B-A-T

RLIO: WAS THAT AN ‘E’ OR A ‘T’?

Half the people in the room: try not to make eye contact so as to not laugh and incur wrath of RLIO.

RLIO: I’M TAKING NOTES FOR SOMEONE. I NEED TO KNOW

Laura: (gritting teeth) E. It’s an ‘E.’

Mary: So when you enter a P code, please don’t forget your Z code, blah, blah, blah

RLIO: WAS THAT ‘P’ OR ‘Z’? I’M TAKING NOTES.

Mary: (pretends not to hear, stares at the table)

Lisa: Think it’s time to sign off. Thanks everyone.

RLIO: HOW DO YOU SPELL YOUR NAME?

We never did learn the difference between a P code or a Z code, or the true identity of the mysterious RLIO, but rumor has it she works on the web team.

And her contract just expired.

And it isn’t being renewed.

But if I meet her again, I’d like to express my gratitude for her determination and relentless refusal to let her questions go unanswered, even if it meant yelling in the middle of a meeting no one’s really sure she should have been attending in the first place.

Because thanks to her? I can spell everyone’s name.