By I shouldn’t be doing this, I shouldn’t be doing this, I shouldn’t be doing this.
Timothy Stark tried stepping around street lights to stay in the shadows. He had seen this technique in countless movies, but, like the amateur he was, he felt awkward and ungainly doing it. What am I doing? He held his hands tightly to stop them shaking, and not from the cold. After all this time, I almost trip over her in the dark.
Amy Turner. The evening’s shadows seemed at ease with her, just as they seemed to mock him. Tim wondered if the deep twilight was attracted to a kindred spirit or if she somehow drew the shadows to her, like an ethereal spectre. Either way, despite having lost sight of her at various moments, he could recognise the confident, I-don’t-give-a-shit gait every time he spotted her again. She had gained a bit of weight and might be keeping her hair shorter, but attitude was as unique as fingerprints.
Why am I doing this?
Had it really been two-and-a-half years? Any given day was incomplete without reliving those last few awful months working for Amy. She had callously used established process, and a compliant Human Resources department, to force him out of a company that he loved and a job he had worked so hard to gain.
In hindsight, the first meeting with HR had foreshadowed what was to come. In his naivety, Tim had swallowed his pride, forced an even, professional tone of voice and held his hands together tightly, to keep his inner turmoil from spilling out. He tried looking at the process as an overly harsh way of improving his performance as a manager and team-member. Later-on, he understood what it really was: a long, slow ambush broken down into legally defendable steps. His manager had set him on an inevitable path out the door, no matter what he did. Bitch.
Damn, where’d she go?
“Tim?”
Hearing his name with her voice dropped him right back into the meeting when he’d resigned. Three months of stress and inevitability had been enough. He knew she wanted him gone, but she couldn’t just fire him without reason, so it had been strung out painfully instead. Make him feel the hopelessness of it and then choose to leave. His letter had been written and the words prepared, but he hadn’t anticipated the slight smile that raised the corners of her mouth. She had her victory, and he had uncertain job prospects.
“Oh, hi, Amy. It’s been a while. How are you?” said Tim and quickly pushed his hands into deep jacket pockets to hide their shaking.
“I’m great, started a new job and having a great time. How did that career change into publishing go?”
Damn, she remembers.
To provide some modicum of outward control, and retain some dignity, Tim had spun a lie about changing careers and working in book publishing. That became nothing and her, now, his humiliation was complete.
“Great, going well. Well, it’s nice bumping into you. Gotta go.”
“Bye, take care.”
Tim couldn’t seem to find a shadow as he, once again, hurried away from his former manager.
*
The café was mid-afternoon busy; office workers stood in line to order their next coffee hit, or stood in clumps having already ordered. Most tables were taken, but Timothy found a small one uncomfortably close to a water station. Uncomfortable is how I roll.
Tim opened LinktInn’s search function and typed in “Amy Turner”, but didn’t press ‘Search’. The professional connection platform has an interesting feature, in that a user can search a person’s name and get a few details in a popup window: primarily where they currently work. However, it won’t register on that person’s profile as a view and won’t divulge who conducted the sneaky search.
The popup window confirmed what Amy mentioned the night before: she had indeed moved on and seemingly only a few months after she had forced him out of the company. Dammit, why did she go to the trouble of getting rid of me when she was leaving soon herself? Unbelievable.
The angle of the chair, the café’s busy interior and the bitterness clouding his thoughts all conspired to hide Amy Turner as she entered the café…right up to the point she sat down opposite him.
“Hi again.”
Tim managed to avoid choking, barely.
“So, why were you following me last night?”
Wow, straight to it as always. “I wasn’t following you,” Tim lied. “Just out for a stroll. I bump into people all the time like that.”
“I find that hard to believe. If I remember rightly, you’re an introvert. You rarely even went to staff events.” Amy eyes bored right into Tim’s and he fought an almost irresistible need to turn away. “I can’t imagine you just go out and about at night and hope to bump into people.”
Tim now closed his eyes for a moment and tried to keep his breathing calm and heart rate under control. This was the confrontation he had spent the last couple of years replaying in his mind, and he hoped he could say what he desperately wanted to.
“Actually, yeah, that’s bullshit. I was sick of feeling like an immature 40-year-old. I hated myself for not telling you what I really thought. I know you just wanted to get rid of me. You used the system to force me out, and I don’t even know why.”
Amy leaned in, further straining Tim’s already fractured composure, “I followed the performance management process exactly. I wanted you to get through and be a better people manager, a more effective part of my team. But you wouldn’t engage with it.”
Tim shook his head and felt his heart hammering in his chest.
“Come on, we both know that something happened, suddenly, and rather than being a mature professional about it, you just decided to get rid of me. I did engage and I did make progress. You kept added things!”
“No, I gave you a chance. I told you weeks before what needed to improve, well before we got into the official process.”
“Garbage. There was something else going on, I don’t know what, but you couldn’t deal with it, so you used procedure to get rid of me. What was it, really? Can you even admit it to yourself?“
“Your memory is flawed.”
“My memory is fine, and I know what I experienced.”
Some of the nearby conversations paused and eyes were drawn to the discussion as it grew heated. Amy appeared flushed and her eyes darted around the café, now studiously refusing to meet Tim’s.
“You know, I spent so much time thinking about what happened and how much I hated you for it,” Tim abruptly rose and ignored the sideways looks of nearby patrons who were following the conversation. “I’ve wasted so much time worrying about you and what happened. I’m tired and I’ve had enough.”
Tim took a step to leave, but quickly turned back to face Amy.
“I know why I followed you the other night. I really know. I needed to confront you so I could finally leave all that crap in the past. You’ve been in my head ever since, weighing me down, but no more.”
Tim felt a clarity that he hadn’t experienced in years, if ever. His heart rate calmed and he visibly relaxed to the point of smiling.
“I was capable of so much more, but you didn’t give me a chance. Now I can do anything, such as leave.”
A block away, and renewed confidence moved though Tim like gentle waves on a beach. He suddenly paused mid-stride and realised he had left Amy with the bill.
Tim strolled home.