Thursday, August 13, 2009

Office romance

Our office does its part to offset the ridiculous cost of our University's education by hiring a number of students for clerical positions. At any given time we have six to eight students rotating in and out, working between classes and around exam schedules. In addition to the regular corps we hire an accounting student as an "intern" for the summer - full time work, with theoretically more complicated duties than filing salary authorizations.

Our intern this summer is M, a phenomenally intelligent, motivated, extremely type-A young man who will finish his accounting degree in record time. As well as the brains, M also has the looks - and a little bit of the arrogance that comes from knowing that you are blessed with both.

R is a delightful young woman who has worked in our office for over a year, off and on. For some reason (it certainly isn't the pay), our student workers enjoy working here, and if hired as freshmen, tend to hang around until they graduate. R spent the spring semester in our Study Abroad program in Madrid; it's very nice to have her back.

A few weeks into the summer R broke up with her boyfriend, news that made it to M's ears in record time. That, in turn, led to about two weeks of rather obvious flirting on M's part. R sits at a desk right outside my office door; I cannot count the number of times I've gone for coffee, only to find M leaning on the low cubicle wall, chatting her up.

Obviously, we need to give our intern more work to do.

In the last week or so, though, R must have brushed him back a bit, most likely not ready to jump back into another relationship. M is still paying lots of attention, but in a much more low-key manner. He has the look of a puppy who has been told to "stay", when the tantalizing treat is just beyond his reach: wanting to be good, but really, really wanting that treat.

At yesterday's staff meeting, we got the word that M liked working with us so much, he will continue to work for us after the new semester begins.

As I said, it's not the pay that keeps them coming back.

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