Downsizing Chapter 3

Work was going quite well. The company started to grow again, and some new personnel had been hired. Even unknown to me, there had been a couple of males hired in the last few months. Ms. Stanton had informed them when she got to the dress code that the makeup was a requirement, and that the one male that decided to stay on chose to dress was a woman while working, but wore regular clothing at home. I found out she never pointed me out only because we had become friends since the big fiasco with the dress code.

After a few weeks with the new male employees, they were still sitting by themselves. They had not been there during the takeover and just didn't click with the rest of us. They worked well enough, but there just wasn't that friendship bond. They did have their female friends though that were hired about the same time they were hired. I noticed an improvement in their makeup that I figured was the women in the group giving them pointers, or even doing it for them. Hell it was even possible that their girlfriends/wives were starting to do it.

After several weeks and the new people starting to blend into the rest of us, it became a pretty close knit office again. Things were once again running smoothly, but that was all about to change. Fortunately the changes would not be at the office.

As Stacy and I rounded the corner into my cubicle after lunch one day, there sat one of my friends that I get together with to watch sports. It was Greg. He was fairly large, being 6'2" and probably 275 lbs. He was one of the guys on his football team in high school, and kept a dream of making into the NFL one day. He still had his football player physique, and was quite intimidating.

Stacy was the only one of the three of us not caught off guard. She said, "Hello Greg, just dropping some stuff off while we go get our afternoon assignments, and we'll be right back. Do not go anywhere." And with that we left the cubicle, and went to our supervisors desk. Linda gave us our assignments, and Stacy told her about Greg being at my desk when we got back from lunch. Linda had a look of concern on her face, and told us she would have security ready if anything went wrong. She also gave Stacy and myself an extra half hour lunch so we could explain to Greg what was going on.