"None of your business."
"It concerns me more than it concerns you," Mike said, hurt.
Debbie didn't know what the meeting was about either and did not care. They were always having meetings around here, and the less you knew, the better. People always wanted to know her business, blowing up stories when nothing at all was happening. She would rather be the one being talked of, than the one doing the talking. Anything was better than being bored.
When she was given the article to zerox, the truth still did not register in her mind. It was an article in the Wall Street Journal, detailing budget cuts in the financial firm on Wall Street where she worked as a secretary.
McGrath and O'Connor has completed its reorganization which will result in the elimination of over 1,000 jobs in 1990. The writedown of 200 million to reduce costs will lower earnings for 1989, but will improve the outlook for 1990.
On her lunch hour, she passed bright clothing in window displays announcing Going Out of Business sales. Christmas was only two weeks away.
"Don't move back to Connecticut. You can't even get a job answering the phone," her best friend told her on the phone that night. Military and defense plants were slowly closing down, putting a freeze on hiring which prevented more people from moving to Southern New England.
"Debbie, my apartments have been empty for two months," her mother told her. Her mother had never had any problems with renting her apartments immediately and could pick and choose her tenants carefully. She never asked her mother for cash, but life in New York City was hard. She did not even know anyone well enough to ask to borrow money.
"Keep your mouth shut. Be glad you have a job," her friend Shelley warned her.
"I'm so sick of answering the phone. Everyone is driving me crazy," she complained to Amanda on her lunch hour. "When are they going to promote me?"
She swore at the zerox machine which had stopped in the middle of sorting twenty thirty-page copies.
"Next time you have copies, I'm sending them down to Quick Copy," she shouted impatiently at Mary, the sales manager as her boss passed her desk.
"That's fine with me," Mary said kindly. She knew better than to ignite the fire of her secretary's temper.
Mike had been irritable all day. Was it something she said?
Ring!
"Did you know Mrs. Bears, of Office Training, has been laid off?" Martha said.
"Hello? That's horrible!" Debbie said. She thought of the dear old lady who had taught the two-week program for new secretaries on Wall Street. They laid her off?
That's right, she thought, remembering one morning in the cafeteria breakfast line. Patricia, who worked on the 17th floor where Debbie had been offered a job, had just gotten laid off.
"I'm taking it easy. I'll find something, but I'm not in a hurry," she said.
How could she be so non chalant? If Debbie were ever laid off, what would she do? This was the center of her life. It was her world.
What would it be like, not seeing Mike or Amanda, or the others every weekday morning?
"No more car vouchers! What privilege are they going to take away next?" Debbie said, sitting at her desk, which was strategically placed at the hub of the office, across from the VP's corner office, directly across from the Office Manager's stares, diagonal from her boss's door and close to the other sales representatives and managers. There were only four secretaries, one for each department.
