The cowardly part of my personality wanted to let this go, to forget Marcia’s increasingly tarnished work attendance record, to forget how little I cared for her attitude toward out-of-town customers, to forget the whispering conversations of which the only word I could hear was an indignant “Beth.”
Most of me wanted to forget all that, but there was a rising tide of ire that was sweeping Spineless Beth off to the side. In her place—at least for now—was Forthright Beth.
I gave the store a practiced look. Everyone was browsing contentedly. I put my shoulders back and sallied forth to the back of the store. It wouldn’t be completely private, but if we kept our voices down, no one would know my problem employee was getting a dressing-down.
Marcia was hanging up her coat with one hand and handing me photographs with the other. “Look, isn’t he the cutest thing?”
I took the pictures and felt my forthrightness slipping away.
“Just printed these this morning.” She smoothed her overly blond hair. “Mrs. Tolliver is going to stop by today, and last time she was in we were talking about my grandbaby. I took these last night. Isn’t he the most adorable child ever?”
Marcia’s daughter and her family had moved back to Rynwood last summer, and Marcia had gone from a life of bookstore clerking and bridge club and dinner at the country club to clerking and grandson adoration, with a concentration on the adoration.
I looked at the photos. The boy was almost three, with blond hair, chubby cheeks, and a big smile. “He’s a good-looking kid.” Just as he had been in the previous thousand photos she’d shown me.
She snatched the pictures away. “Good-looking doesn’t do him justice. Oh, you’re just poking a little fun. Always the jokester, aren’t you?” She giggled.
“Marcia, weren’t you supposed to be here at ten?”
“Oh, that.” She made a
I tried not to look at my watch. “You were scheduled to be here at ten.” But why shouldn’t I look at my watch? I did so, ostentatiously. “It’s after eleven.”
“Family is more important than work,” she said, smiling. “You’re a mother, so I know you understand. Did I tell you what he said last week? It was the cutest thing, he—”
The irritation I’d woken up with came back full force. I tried to tamp it down, but the anger had been building for months and had only needed a night of poor sleep to set it free.
“Ten o’clock means ten o’clock.” I tapped my watch. “It doesn’t mean whenever you see fit to come in—it means ten o’clock.”
“Well, I know that.” Marcia had a puzzled look in her eyes. “And I’m always on time, except for once in a while.”
I held up my hands and started ticking off fingers. “Monday he had a haircut you couldn’t miss. The week before you had to leave early to shop for a new bib. Before that you had to help interview a new babysitter. And the day we had a rainbow you rushed out of here with hardly a word.”
“He couldn’t miss seeing the rainbow,” she said indignantly. “What kind of grandmother would I be if I let him miss his first rainbow?”
One who has a job? “Emergencies are understandable and perfectly acceptable reasons for coming in late and leaving early. But the definition of the emergency is ‘urgent necessity,’ and I don’t see that clipping your grandson’s fingernails is a necessity.”
She picked a stray hair off her sweater. “Oh, look. It’s one of his! See the curl?”
“Marcia, I need dependable staff. A store can’t function without reliable employees, and reliable doesn’t mean rushing off for things that aren’t important.”
“Not important!”
Finally, I had her full attention.
“How can you say that picking out his first tricycle isn’t important?”
“It’s no emergency,” I said.
“Well, when you’re a grandmother, maybe you’ll understand that the definition of emergency changes when there are grandchildren involved.” She smiled tolerantly.
“I hope I never consider anyone’s bowel movement anything I need to leave work for.”
Marcia’s eyes thinned to slits.
Oh. My. I’d said that out loud, hadn’t I? Time to move this conversation elsewhere. “Let’s go into my office.” I took a step to my right, leading the way. “We’ll talk this over and—”
Marcia stayed rooted in place. “Some things are more important than work,” she said distinctly. “I always thought of you as a sympathetic employer. With children of your own, I thought you would understand.”
“I do.” I tried to diffuse the ratcheting tempers by trying to relax, trying to smile. “But if you commit to working, you have to put your job at a higher priority than most other things in your life.”
She gaped at me. “I can’t believe you said that! What kind of mother would put a mere job ahead of her own flesh and blood?”
A mother with a mortgage, two college educations that needed funding, and a child support check that, though it had once seemed generous, now didn’t seem to cover the needs of two rapidly growing children. “There’s a balance,” I said as evenly as I could.
“That’s what I’m talking about. And now is as good a time as any.”
“For what?”
“I need the week of Thanksgiving off. Plus, I won’t be able to work the week after Christmas, and not the week before. There’s just too much to do!” Marcia wafted off into descriptions of turkeys drawn in the shape of hands and Christmas cookie baking and present wrapping and stocking hanging.
When she got to marshmallow making (
“I don’t know.” Marcia smiled, dimples showing in both cheeks. “Did you hear that I need the week of Thanksgiving off? And the weeks before and after Christmas?”
My ears felt as if they were on fire. “I can’t possibly give you that much time off.”
“Why not? Lois can work a few extra hours. Sara and Paoze will be off school. And look at this place.” She waved a languid hand at the bookshelves. “It’s not like people are packed in here Walmart tight.”
I chose my next words carefully. “Christmas is our busiest time of the year. Our annual profit depends on doing well in December.”
“Your annual profit, not mine. All I get is a paycheck.” She shrugged. “A small one, at that. My husband keeps saying I should ask for a raise. I’ve been here longest, other than Lois. So I’ll ask now. Can I have a raise?”
In the same conversation she was asking for three weeks off smack in the middle of the busiest time of year, she was also asking for a raise. I had a pet theory that, if spontaneous combustion truly existed, it was caused by having too many contradictory points of view in one body. I slid back a few inches, but Marcia didn’t burst into flames.
“And come to think of it”—she leaned her head to one side—“why don’t I take the first part of January off, too. All we do that week is inventory, and you don’t need me for that.”
“If you care about this job so little,” I said quietly, “why do you work here at all?”
“Because I love books.” She gave me an indignant look.
“I need you to commit to working at least twenty hours a week. Twenty-five between Thanksgiving and Christmas.”
“Twenty-five hours?” She compressed her lips, making small vertical lines appear all around her mouth. “During the holidays?” she asked. “Weren’t you listening? I need that time off.”
“And I need you to work twenty-five hours a week.”
Her mouth moved, but nothing came out for a while. “But I can’t work that much!”
“Then maybe you should quit.”
There. I’d said it. Out loud, calmly, coolly, and without too much squeak in my voice.
Marcia frowned. “Maybe I . . . ?” The sentence trailed off into the place where sentences go to die when the speaker (at last) clues in to the fact that she hasn’t had any idea what was really going on. “Quit?” she asked. “You
