I know you’re on PTO, but can you call me? It’s 911!

Hello??? Charlotte, U there?

Actually, hold on. Maybe this will be OK. These 20 y.o.s are REALLY into the art!

And I’m told the people at the bar are having fun, too!

Yup. Ignore. Clients are happy. Crisis averted.

Do U think reporting will still be OK?

The last message sends a shiver down my spine. On the one hand, it’s great that the clients don’t seem to notice anything is wrong at their respective events, but on the other hand, this little list mix-up is likely going to mess up the reporting for both events. I need to get to my computer and adjust the metrics, otherwise when Marigold runs the recap report on Monday, it’ll look like we totally missed the mark on who their target demo is—at least from the numbers side of things. And that’s not a fuckup for which I’m willing to admit any fault. This would never have happened if I was still in the office.

“Char? The car’s here,” Brian says, trying to get my attention. “Is everything okay?”

I finally tune him back in. “No, it’s not. My team screwed up something really major with two important clients and now all the reporting is going to be fucked come Monday.”

“Hey, it’s okay. Come here,” he says, attempting to pull me in for a hug. I bob and weave and call the intern back instead.

“Hello?” she says, shouting into the line. It sounds like she’s at a New Year’s Eve party.

“What’s going on with Calder?”

“Everything is fine! I can’t talk... I’m schmoozing!” she screams before killing the line altogether.

“Wow, that girl was a loud talker. But I guess the good news is that everything seems okay,” Brian says.

“Yeah, but it’s not—trust me. Because of some stupid intern who couldn’t read a file name correctly, not one, but two outcomes that were supposed to happen tonight, won’t.”

“So?”

“So my reporting is going to look like a third grader put it together. This is seriously so messed up, you have no idea. Can you just drive me to my office? I need access to our work server so both these clients don’t end up canceling our contracts when their event recaps make no sense whatsoever.”

“You want me to drive you to your office right now?”

“Yes, right now. I know traffic is bad, but it’s not that far. We can take side streets.”

“I don’t care how far it is. It’s late. You’re on PTO. I don’t think your boss expects you to be the one to fix this right now. Can’t this wait?”

Is he kidding?

“No. It can’t. I need to put together an alternative group in case the client wants to redo the event, and it wouldn’t hurt to run some preliminary reports to see just how screwed up this embarrassing mistake looks on paper.”

“The event is going well, Charlotte. Whoever you just talked to said she had it under control and the client is happy. Did you not catch that? Does that not count for anything?”