(I’m back! I’ve had spotty internet and there was no way I was going to try typing out this story on my phone.)
So we had a potluck at work on Thursday.
Skye informed me end off day on Wednesday that we would be having a “lucky lunch” on Thursday to welcome me to the team. It took a thorough round of questioning to understand what she meant. I don’t know if she honestly had no idea what a potluck was and messed up the name, or if she was purposefully trying to confuse me so I wouldn’t get any ideas about bringing my own dish to pass.
I suspect the latter because, once I’d discovered her meaning, she repeated several times, and emphatically, that this meal was in my honor and I wasn’t expected to contribute.
Ha.
As if I’d ever leave my gastrointestinal well-being to the likes of Skye and Blaise.
Accepting Skye’s challenge, I finally signed up for Pinterest and searched “easy potluck recipes”.
Which led to showy potluck recipes, and then to recipes I could never feasibly concoct in my current living situation, then back to 5-layer dips.
My mother has always said, with weary resignation, that I make enemies too quickly and too eagerly. The look on Skye’s face when I strolled into work bearing a platter of Mississippi Sin dip in a bread bowl was worth every future attempt on my life.
Everyone was so in awe of my offering that I don’t think they noticed I never touched any other dish on the counter.
And I have no idea what any of the other dishes were supposed to be. No meatballs, no taco dip, no pulled pork or deviled eggs. Not a crockpot in sight. There was a bowl of something I thought was Jell-O until I got closer and smelled something...not savory, but not Jell-O. Rose hefted a cast iron pot of watery soup onto the counter. There was black bread--as in, bread baked that way with ingredients that turned it the color of coal, though Les cut into it alright. And there were fresh mushrooms that looked neon when opened.
I don’t think mushrooms are supposed to do that.
Before she got to the mushrooms, Blaise was coherent enough to ask me if my dish was an old family recipe. I told her I’d adapted it from Pinterest.
She looked even more dazed and bemused that normal.
Skye spent the rest of the afternoon glaring at me. She wasn’t in on Friday--no idea why. Didn’t ask. I’m prepared to face her on Monday, but I’ll be taking precautions.
Isn’t there a plant or herb that grants protection from enchantments and hexes.
So that’s Week Two at my new job! I got a small paycheck this week, for last week’s work. Few more of those and I can start to seriously consider buying or renting a house.
I’m still alive! Just dying of heat stroke and second-hand inhalation from whatever mushrooms Blaise is smoking on her breaks. After a week, I think I’m pretty well settled in, but there’s still a lot I need to ...adjust to.
For example, I came across a dog on Wednesday when I dared to venture out on my break. I was preparing to get on the ground like you’re supposed to around rabid dogs when some Green Giant came out of the trees to tell me the dog was Conan and he lived on the grounds. Something about keeping out foxes or something. Dog could keep out bears with one dark look, but he seemed nice enough if I kept my hands in my pockets.
The forest guardian who keeps our resident wolfhound in line is our arborist, Les. Our conversation didn’t last long after I’d finished admiring Conan’s teeth; Les mumbled a bunch of weird tree jargon (the maples are sick, guys, and I don’t know what to do with this information) and kind of wandered off.
I met one of the horticulturists next, performing some ritual over the rhododendrons. She seemed nice, though understandably hot working out in the weather. We shook hands and then she started reading my palm. I know enough about palmistry to know when she got to my life line which is--and I don’t go in for palm-reading--admittedly...brief. Things got a little awkward after that, so I took my leave.
I narrowly dodged Rose, who was picking mushrooms and chanting to herself (maybe she’s Blaise’s dealer) and ran afoul of Jay, one of the groundskeepers. Turns out there are parts of the grass guests are allowed to walk on and parts of the grass they can’t touch, and there’s no distinction but somehow I was supposed to know that the patch under the big oak by the pond is off-limits. If it’s that important, why not install some actual pathways?
By the time I stumbled onto a fairy ring while heading back to the office, I was paying enough attention to give it a wide berth.
Things are weird around here, folks. I said before that Iney seems to be the only person acquainted with modern technology. I don’t know if it’s some sort of company culture thing I missed the memo on, but everyone seems to get on well enough the old-fashioned way, so whatever. I mean, except Blaise. It was implied that she’s an intern here, and yet, somehow, I seem to be training her.
Which is how I happen to breathe in so much second-hand mushroom fumes. That girl is higher than a kite on Everest. Most of the time when you talk to her, she just...looks at you. Doesn’t make a noise, don’t move, just stares.
Her dead-eyed routine doesn’t hold a candle to Autumn, though. That girl….
Ok. Let’s do a quick review of everyone in my office, shall we? Get the names straight.
Iney, in HR, is probably the safest of my coworkers. She’s sweet and intelligent and maybe an actual goddess, and we can hold a fairly normal conversation when we cross paths. I like Iney. As it happens, she did my phone interview, back when I was living out of a van across two state lines and had sent out resumes at whim (I don’t even remember sending one to #6 Seeley Court).
Skye, in accounting, was present for my in-person interview and if she’d been the only one interviewing me, I never would have got this job. From what I can tell, Skye’s actively trying to kill me. I also have my doubts about whether she’ll make sure I get paid on time, which is a passive form of murder on top of the active kind that involves boxes left in surprising places around corners and strange plants turning up on my desk.
Robin, a fellow administrative person who spends most of her time in the filing room or having...energetic discussions in Iney’s office (not in English???), is passively trying to kill me. I don’t think that girl could do anything intentional if her life depended on it. I have a feeling she’s here for the same reason Blaise is: she’s a relative of the family and needs some way to occupy her time.
Blaise…. Blaise is some distant cousin of Tania’s and is like a trust fund baby who turned to drugs to try and add some color to her life. I wouldn’t be surprised is she can smell colors at this point. She’s on break half of the day and whenever she’s inside she’s nursing a cup of what I hope is herbal tea while she stares over my shoulder and watches me create spreadsheets or Google stuff.
Autumn, Tania’s assistant, makes Blaise’s drug dependence look tame. The only time she’s coherent is when she’s received a message from Tania and has to pass it on to one of the staff. The rest of the time she sits at her desk like a robot switched to low-power mode, with the creepiest vague expression in her unblinking eyes. If she started spouting error codes and glitching, I wouldn’t be the least surprised.
Tania herself is an enigma. Never met her, have no idea what she looks like, have no idea if she’s ever in. But even when she’s not here, it’s like her spirit is, and it demands reverence and order.
Glen, the housekeeping/maintenance guy, is “???” personified. Don’t get any ideas about the picture; Picrew doesn’t allow for avatars that are conventionally ugly. Not to say Clay is hideous, just...plain (also he has a faint unibrow). Outside the context of work I don’t think I’d actually recognize him. Again, he’s a little clueless and I don’t think we should put the upkeep of the office in his hands.
And, for kicks, we’ve got Alba in admissions. Alba shouldn’t work in admissions; in fact, she shouldn’t hold any position that requires her to interact in any way with other people. It’s a wonder anyone visits the gardens with her standing watch at the gate. I have to get past her to get onto the grounds and get to the office, and the first day I was almost late because we had a four-minute-long staring contest while Alba decided whether or not she was going to let me in.
Alba doesn’t like me.
I got carried away making avatars and made one of Holly, too. Holly’s odd, but nice enough. If I stumble across her on the grounds I don’t immediately fear for my well-being. And she’s happy to answer questions about plant identification.
Apart from these folks, there’s Les the arborist, Rose the ecologist, Jay and Kieran on grounds crew, and three or four other guys I haven’t really met. That’s it! Our own happy little cult-family.
It’s my first day at my new job and I’m kinda freaking out.
The phone interview went really well, but the in-person interview was almost a month ago and there was almost no one at the office when I was there so I have no idea what my coworkers are gonna be like.
Nope. The second day, if perhaps not harder, was weirder. I’m serious when I say I may have inadvertently walked into some sort of soft cult thing.
Wanna know the signs of a cult:
1) A charismatic leader
2) Isolation
3) Delegitimization of former members (yeah I googled that)
4) Paranoia about the outside world
5) Elitism
6) Secret rites
And my evidence?
1) Ok, so I haven’t met the director yet. The gardens are managed and maintained through some sort of foundation or trust fund that was established by the original owners of the property (highfalutin people with lots of influence back in the day). The current director, a woman named Tania, is a descendant of theirs. As I understand it, she’s almost never in, but her name is always uttered in reverential tones, and her assistant Autumn seems to have a direct line to her and is regularly handing down judgment and directives like the placement of sunflowers or the approval of new staff.
2) I was on the garden property for almost two miles before I even reached the gravel parking lot and admission building. The office where I work is even further back on the grounds. We’re on the edge of town and, though I’m meant to help interface with guests, they don’t appear to have the main office number and I almost never see them.
3) Everyone is super vague about my predecessor. He/she left decent notes, but I have no idea what his/her name was or any other details. Any suggestion of the person who managed this office before me is met with sneers from the others.
5) (yes I know I skipped a number but this ties in with the above) There’s a definite air of snobbery here; nothing overt, but you can sense it. The rest of the staff seem to be associated in some way or other with Tania’s esteemed family, even if the connection is four or five people deep, and I’m decidedly an outsider. We’re meant to be a public garden, but any guests who manage to get past the troll in admissions and make it onto the property are regarded as a necessary evil.
Except by Rose, the withered old ecologist, who eyes them like they’re her next meal. I swear that woman’s original form is a snake or something.
4) Again, this kind of ties into the above. I swear, apart from Iney in HR, I don’t know that any of the other office staff have ever met a computer, much less the internet. I casually mentioned the weather forecast when I came in (spoiler: freakin’ hot and humid with a slight chance of rain that won’t help anything) and when I was right, my desk neighbor, Robin, looked at me like I was some sort of prognosticating witch. Our intern Blaise, some relative of Tania’s, doesn’t even have a phone.
All she has is drugs.
And there’s no indication that anyone else leaves this property. They’re all here when I get here at 9:00 and they’re all here when I leave at 5:00. No one leaves to get lunch.
Might need to experiment with this.
6) Again, I haven’t witnessed any rituals, but come on. It’s bound to happen sooner than later.
All in all, the set-up bears several earmarks of a cult.
But they pay well.
Well enough that I can afford my own place, and put something toward savings and investments like the proper adult I am.
So here I am, in the wilds of Michigan, still living out of my van until I find a house, wondering how I’m going to fit in at my new office without falling victim to brainwashing or some such. They don’t seem to have a prophet type (unless that’s Tania), so I guess I’m safe from any attempts at communal suicide rituals or polygamy. I guess I avoid eating their food and hope for the best.
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