Pemberton & Associates
by Anonymous
Margot Ellery-Booth has managed eight years at Pemberton & Associates through the reliable application of thorough documentation, well-structured memos, and the firm belief that any situation can be improved with a sufficiently detailed follow-up email. Then Desmond Okafor-Tremblay arrives — quiet, unhurried, already in possession of the solution — and she is assigned to co-lead a project with him in a converted storage cupboard that smells of toner. It is, she will eventually conclude, a perfectly satisfactory arrangement. It takes her ten chapters to get there.
Chapters
2 of 11 freeChapter Three: In Which the Boardroom is Contested
Margot spends three weeks believing she has been extraordinarily lucky with boardroom bookings. She has not been lucky.
Chapter Four: In Which Preethi Offers Counsel
Preethi takes Margot to lunch and deploys a series of carefully aimed observations. Margot deflects all of them with great professional confidence. She is wrong about the tea.
Chapter Five: In Which We Are Snowed In
The forecast said flurries. Ottawa delivered something considerably more than flurries. Margot and Desmond are the last two people in the office, and by eight o'clock the work has stopped being work.
Chapter Six: In Which the Retreat Retreats
Gerald's winter retreat in the Gatineau Hills. One laptop, one working outlet, one presentation that should not have worked and somehow did.
Chapter Seven: In Which I Discover the Filing System
Margot is looking for a file on the shared server. She finds a folder she did not know existed. It is labelled, in Desmond's immaculate filing system, E-B Correspondence.
Chapter Eight: In Which the Deputy Minister Arrives
The NIAI briefing for the Deputy Minister of Infrastructure. The catering goes to the wrong building, the projector outputs exclusively in French, and Margot and Desmond handle all of it without a plan.
Chapter Nine: In Which I Send Another Email
The project is delivered. Margot writes Desmond an email that is nine words long. This is, for her, essentially a telegram.
Chapter Ten: In Which Things Are, On the Whole, Satisfactory
A new project. The same storage cupboard. Point fourteen.
Epilogue: Three Months Later (One Email)
Gerald sends an all-staff announcement. Patrick Nguyen-Malhotra replies. Preethi says two words. Desmond says the coffee is on.
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