ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

I should get a second job as a prophet or something, because when I showed up at work Friday to open the store, my got there earlier than usual and said, “You should know that I fired [new girl] yesterday.” These tidings came much sooner than I’d expected, even based on how bad she has been to work with the last few weeks, so I mentally did a dance of ultimately hilarity at her expense and then asked what she’d done. It turns out that after she left early on Monday, she never showed back up for work again all week. ALL WEEK! So on Thursday after she’d done her third no-call, no-show for the week and fourth for the month, my boss turned in her separation notice. What’s more, he explained, it wasn’t just us, nobody seemed to know where she was, because her parents and brother had been calling all week trying to get in touch with her. As soon as I heard that, I felt terrible for thinking This worried me a little, because what if something had really happened to her?

Later my boss’s boss called, and it was hard not to laugh in front of my customers when I heard my boss say loudly and incredulously, “She’s in the pokey?” It seems that the new girl had a warrant outstanding that turned up on her background check back in October when she was hired, but when my boss asked her about it she lied and claimed it had already been taken care of.

“Do you know what it was for?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he said. “Well, no. I know what she said it was for. Not that I asked her, she volunteered it.” I didn’t want to push my luck by being too nosey about something that was technically none of my business, so although I was very curious I didn’t ask for further detail.

Apparently on Tuesday night sometime she ran her car into the ditch because she wasn’t paying attention to the road, and when the police came to help her they ran her license and turned up her warrant and took her in. The only reason we ever found out is that she had a friend contact my boss’s boss, who got her the job with us originally because he used to work with her himself. When my boss told me all I could do was laugh and laugh. “Do you think she knows yet that she’s fired?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Any normal person ought to assume so after missing three days and not calling, but knowing her she won’t figure it out.”

“She can console herself by color coordinating the hoosegow,” I told him.

“That’s just wrong,” he accused. “Funny, but wrong!”

“Sorry I can’t stop laughing about the new girl being fired and landing in the pokey,” I said. “It’s just originally I was worried, and now her situation happens to be totally hilarious and retarded!”

“For future reference,” my boss said, “It sounds more sincere if you don’t laugh while you’re saying you’re sorry.”