3WW (Cajole, Recluse, Temper): Report Enhancement

I clasped the rigid handle and tried to gain entry. Locked, it seemed. Thank God, I thought. An excuse I could take back to my boss. I turned to walk back through the vacant corridor when a young woman rounded the corner, almost colliding with me. My boss, as it turned out.

‘Did you speak to him?’ she asked.

‘No, door’s locked’ I replied.

‘Locked? That’s odd.’ She walked to the door and gave a push. The heavy wooden slab swung open to reveal a room absent the light of most normal corporate offices.

‘Doesn’t seem locked to me,’ she answered sarcastically. ‘He’s towards the back.’ She was about to leave but turned and said, ‘He has a temper.’ With that, she was gone.

I pushed the door open sending bastard rays of fluorescent light into the darkened chamber. As the door hinged shut, I noticed the jungle of cubicles and computer parts strewn about the room. This room had obviously housed about a half dozen people in the company’s prime, but the number had dwindled until there remained but one recluse tucked in a back corner.

No one claimed to have seen him apart from his manager. He was said to arrive earlier and leave later than any employee. In fact, there was talk that he never really left at all. But for such a technology-heavy shop, the main systems never seemed to fail, thanks to him – our final information technology resource.
The faint glow of a monitor shown dully from behind a cubicle wall. I scuffed my shoes along the worn carpet to forewarn him of my approach, as if the door wasn’t enough. I stepped deliberately from behind the cubicle wall to find a dark haired, cleanly shaven young man of no more than thirty years.

‘Hi,’ I said in the happiest voice I could find in such a dark place.

No response. I heard the muffled rhythms of music.

‘Hello’ I said again. Louder this time.

This second greeting startled him. He leapt from his chair with surprising agility, the ear plugs falling to the ground.

‘What the hell do you want?’ he screamed twice as loudly as was necessary in such a space.

‘Uh… um… well’

‘Oh, spit it out!’

I noted the unnatural glow of his bleach-white face. I had no idea how to cajole the likes of this apparent maniac. ‘I… I was told you would know how to update the… um… reconciliation report.’

‘What do you idiots want now?’ he retorted, sitting down at his desk. His fingers flew over the keyboard; the cursor flailing across the screen with reckless abandon.

‘Can you um… add a drop down so we can uh… sort by customer?’

‘Yeah, whatever.’ Again, his hands magically glided across the keys. ‘This look like what you want?’

I gazed at the screen, feeling somehow dirty in doing so. ‘Um… yeah, that looks fine.’

‘Good, then get the hell out of my room. And never come back. Send someone with balls next time. Like that boss of yours.’

I escaped the darkness and returned to my cubicle. I pulled up the report and noticed the fully functional, perfectly placed drop-down menu. The report went out to my boss by day’s end.