The first thing I did when I arrived to the office was make an appointment to see the head of HR, Victoria Gannon, for that afternoon. I’d never met her in person before, but I had seen her in the hallways. She was a woman of vast dimensions in all directions, and her clothes, hair and makeup were always pristine.

I spent the rest of that morning planning what I would say. I didn’t want to be emotional about it, because I didn’t want this to become about me. I only wanted to report the facts about PowerPoint Monkey, and how he stole credit for my work and was promoted as a result.

When it was time for my meeting, I took a deep breath, grabbed my notes and walked to Victoria’s office. Her door was open, so I knocked lightly on the doorframe to announce my presence. She looked up and smiled a welcoming smile as she said, “Come in, Kelly, come in, please, have a seat.”

I closed the door behind me and sat down on the edge of a chair with my knees pressed together, my hands in my lap and my back straight. I could feel my palms begin to sweat. I took a deep breath to stem the small panic rising in my chest. I tried to look calm as I plastered a prim half smile on my face.

Victoria looked at me expectantly as I sat there sweating before finally asking me, “So. What can I do for you.”

As I started to talk, my voice began to shake. I cleared my throat and took another deep breath while I searched my mind for my canned speech. I was drawing a blank. I needed to start talking before this woman thought I was having a breakdown, so I blurted out, “Well, it’s Brad.”

Now it was Victoria’s turn for a prim half smile. “What about Brad.”

“I caught him on more than one occasion telling other people about my work and my ideas and implying that he was the one who did it or thought of it.”

She pressed her lips together tightly. She was no longer smiling and she sat there blinking at me. I wondered whether I was supposed to keep talking, or if she was going to respond. I could feel the silky lining of my suit become cold with my sweat. Finally she said, “So, am I to understand you are under the assumption that Brad has claimed responsibility for your work?”

“Assumption? No, not the assumption, I know this. I know this for a fact. I’ve caught him.”

“I see.” She focused on me with this weird, scary gaze. It could have been a murderous gaze. How could she not understand this situation? Why was she looking at me like she wanted to twist my head clear off my neck and eat the innards of my skull?

While I waited for her to respond in a way that didn’t entail shooting laser beams at me with her eyes, I was screaming on the inside, “I said I caught him! Shouldn’t she be thirsty for details? Why wouldn’t she ask me what happened?”

After what was probably only a split second, I couldn’t take her stare any longer. I had to spill the details. “Yeah, so I designed this encoding operation.”

Victoria snapped at me, “You designed it.”

“Um, yes. I designed it. And well, Brad was walking around with my diagram…”

“Your diagram? You put the diagram to paper?”

“Well, no. I mean, I designed the work-flow and how all the people and the equipment fit together, and then I told Brad, and he made the diagram for me, but then he was telling everyone that he…”

“So it was Brad’s diagram that, as you say, he was walking around with.”

I felt lightheaded. I began to shake and I couldn’t keep my voice from wavering. “Yes. I mean no. Well, he wouldn’t have been able to make the diagram if … Look. Brad is nothing but a PowerPoint Monkey. He wouldn’t have an original thought if you pumped him full of LSD and threw him into the ring at Cirque du Soleil!”

Victoria drew herself up to her full Godzilla height and breathed fire at me. “Miss Brennan! That is highly inappropriate! We are done here. Please. Just get out. Go. I don’t want to hear any more about this. Out. Now. Leave.”

I didn’t say another word as I wobbled out the door of her office and hyperventilated all the way back to mine.