It was a hot July day, one of the hottest of the summer, and Jim was desperately wishing for air conditioning in his studio apartment. He cranked up the box fan sitting in his window and wiped the sweat from his brow, looking around the room filled with empty boxes and unpacked knickknacks, and thought he had definitely made some progress today. He knew he could get through the last few boxes before dinner, and so he pulled over another box and started unpacking.
I wonder if I have to save all these papers from Scranton, he thought to himself as he flipped through old quarterly numbers and copies of expense reports, not even noticing a small sheet of paper with a yogurt lid attached to it fall from the stack. The sunlight beaming through the window danced on the golden medal, managing to catch the corner of Jim’s eye. He dropped the papers in his hands and picked up the note, thumbing over the yogurt lid and reading Pam’s message:
Jim, Don't forget us when you're famous! Pam
He was almost breathless from the sight of it, like a ghost from the past visiting him, and he wondered where it had come from. ‘Famous’ implied that he would be somewhere that he could become famous. Well, maybe not famous, but that would be what Pam would call it. Probably exaggerating just to make fun of him.
Perhaps she wrote it when he left to take the promotion?
“Don’t forget us…” Jim read aloud to himself in the now sweltering and unfamiliar apartment. It seemed as though all the work he had put into making it his own had been washed away, and the only thing left that was slightly comforting was a stupid piece of gold foil. “Don’t forget us…”
Immediately remorse set in. Why didn’t he find this sooner? This was the sign he had been looking for! Sure, Pam had said all those things at the beach, but after that she went back to treating him as a friend, which he took as a sign that she would never want them to be… what he wanted them to be. And so he ran from what he felt was a hopeless situation. Again.
But now he knew, it wasn’t hopeless. This was her signal that she wanted to—
“Woah,” he said out loud to himself, the argument in his mind now seeping out into the real world. Jim shook his head and stared at the note. Pam wrote it two months ago; who knows how she would feel about him now. And yes, he should’ve found it sooner, but he didn’t. He took the promotion and moved away, and nothing could be done about that. But maybe if he got to talk to her, he could ask her about it…
…
Jim’s stomach was in knots as he stepped off the elevator. There was no turning back now, and so he began what seemed like the Bataan Death March toward the Dunder Mifflin offices. Feeling like it was strangling his neck, he loosened his tie and took a deep breath before pulling open the door and stepping inside.
And that’s when he laid eyes on her again for the first time in five months.
She looked… different.
Jim couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was. Well, he could: her hair was different, she was wearing a new sweater, she had makeup on. But there was something else about her too. She didn’t look as… trapped behind that receptionist’s desk anymore, and so he gazed at her for a moment, wondering what made her look that way.
That’s when she looked up and saw him, and he froze in his tracks.
He could hear her gasp softly, as if she wasn’t expecting him to be standing right there, and then a big smile crossed her face. Her eyes lit up brighter than he had ever seen, and her expression was so infectious that he swore his cheeks would hurt the next day from smiling back at her so much.
“Jim—”
“Hi—”
“Hey, it’s so good to see—”
“Jim!” Michael shouted from his office. Jim’s smile quickly faded as Michael ran out to give him a hug. “There he is! There he is! He's back! And look at the suit and the hair! Haha! Who’s the J.Crew model that just walked in the door?”
“Michael—” Jim started to reprimand, but he could barely be heard once Andy joined in.
“Watch out! It’s Biiiiig Haircut! Back in town. Lock up your daughters!”
Jim took a deep sigh and instinctively looked over at Pam for support, to which she gave him a smile and a small shrug. But when she turned back to the spreadsheet she was working on, Jim felt suddenly abandoned to face the barrage of idiotic remarks from his subordinates. He was shocked for a moment that Pam would desert him, but then he realized that he didn’t have to take what he was being subjected to. He finally had some power, and he was going to exercise it.
“All right guys,” Jim put his hands up and gave them a critical look, “that‘s enough.” And much to Jim’s surprise, Michael and Andy responded by shutting up. It was nothing short of a miracle. Jim smiled to himself, proud that his otherwise reckless employees would listen to him, and decided to take the managerial role up a notch.
It was time for an announcement.
“Hey, can I have everyone’s attention?” Jim raised his voice to the workers in the bullpen. “Um, it’s nice to see all of you again. I just want to let everyone know up front that, even though I was a salesman here, I am, essentially…” he stumbled for the right words, finally giving up and going with the conventional term, “your boss now. And, I know that Michael has been trying to get used to this as best he can, and I’m hoping that you will all try to accept this as well. So, um, I have a presentation to give to all of you on some new technology we’re implementing in the company, so, conference room in 10 minutes?”
The room was so silent that Jim could probably have heard a pin drop. It was unnerving.
“Okay,” he answered to himself as he looked around the room of blank faces. “I will see you all then.” With that, Jim silently trudged into the conference room and shut the door. And as he began to set up the media for his presentation, he couldn’t help but wonder how things had started out so well, with Michael and Andy actually listening to an instruction, but quickly transformed into something so awkward, like a teacher trying to get students to solve a problem on the chalkboard.
Management is tricky, he thought to himself as he pulled up his PowerPoint.
…
“… So, since the main way we can gain the edge on the competition is through our customer service, I, and the others at corporate, have come up with an idea to make our service faster and more reliable. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Dunder Mifflin LiveChat.”
Jim pressed a key to reveal the next slide, and suddenly an image of the future Dunder Mifflin LiveChat interface window popped up, expelling oohs and ahs from the crowd. His presentation was going surprisingly well, but then again, he had always had a knack for captivating a crowd. It was one of the many skills he had actually found useful at corporate; it’s amazing how many more people listen to you when you can inject a presentation with some charisma.
“Through this instant messaging system, clients will be able to reach their salesmen without delay. So, say Dwight has a customer. Dwight, name one of your biggest clients.”
Dwight smirked devilishly, “Well Jim, ever since you gave it up, Blue Cross of Pennsylvania has become my biggest and most lucrative client. They are buying more paper from me than they ever did from you.”
“Alright,” Jim tried to go on without laughing at Dwight’s terrible attempt at bragging. “Well, the corporate customer service team has gone through and given a unique username to each and every one of our clients. Dwight, I remember that client of yours having the username BlueCrossPenn. So let’s say their rep needs to talk to you right away. What they can do is go on to our website, log in with their unique username and a password that they set up, and they can find you on LiveChat and instantly message you with their question, or whatever they need to talk to you about. Make sense?”
Phyllis raised her hand, “Will we have to go onto the website to be available to talk?”
“Excellent question Phyllis,” Jim smiled, making Phyllis blush embarrassedly. “Actually, IT will be installing software onto all of your computers that will make LiveChat available without needing to use the web browser. It’ll be similar to AOL or MSN or Yahoo Messengers, except it will be for company use only. You’ll only be able to add client usernames or Dunder Mifflin employee usernames.”
“We get usernames too?” Oscar asked.
“Yes, and that brings me to LiveChat’s next function. Now, say Dwight wants to talk to…” Jim smirked, “Angela. About… accounting business.”
“I would never talk to Dwight about accounting matters of any kind,” Angela sneered, sending an icy cold stare in Dwight’s direction.
Jim was utterly confused, “Uh, well… for the sake of the example, let’s just say he does. Dwight, in addition to all of your clients’ usernames, you will also be able to LiveChat with anyone from the company. Now, there is a directory of names that you can access using your own unique username and password, and at any point in time you may add or delete names from your contacts list. But there are exceptions: first, it is mandatory that you have everyone in your branch on your contact list. Second, everyone must have a corporate contact; that means accounting will have the corporate accounting head, customer service will have the corporate customer service head… get it?”
“But, what if I need to talk to Bill in Albany about… something businessy?” Kevin asked hesitantly.
“You mean, something other than the fantasy football league you put together every year?” Jim inquired with a smirk. “Well, then you have the option of finding Bill on the directory and adding him to your contacts manually. So just so we’re clear, you are mandated to keep certain people on your contact list, like everyone in the branch, but you may also add other people from the company as well. That is the beauty of the system. Now, Kelly—”
Jim looked to the back of the room to find Kelly snuggled up tight next to Ryan, her eyes closed and a dreamful smile on her face.
“Kelly?”
Ryan nudged her and immediately she bolted upright, “What! Yes?”
“Kelly, because you are this branch’s customer service rep, you get a very special responsibility with our new system. You ready for it?” Jim asked in a tone that vaguely resembled a master asking if his dog wanted a chew toy.
“Oh, totally,” Kelly nodded enthusiastically. “Bring it on.”
“You will be the administrator of this branch’s LiveChat chat room.”
“Um… okay. What’s that?”
Jim faltered for a moment, wondering just how he could explain this in terms that Kelly could understand. But he quickly picked the pace back up, “Okay, well, say one of Dwight’s clients, say Blue Cross of Pennsylvania, doesn’t want to talk to Dwight. They think he’s too… aggressive.”
“That’s easily believable,” Angela muttered under her breath.
“So what they do instead,” Jim continued after a momentary confused glance at Angela, “is they go onto LiveChat, and instead of choosing to talk to Dwight, they choose the Scranton Branch Customer Service Chat, where they find you, ready to answer questions at a moment’s notice. Pretty cool?”
“I guess…” Kelly conceded. “But can I like, chat with my friends on this thing too?”
“No,” Jim sighed. How many times was he going to have to repeat himself? “Only clients and Dunder Mifflin employees.”
Without warning, Michael jumped up and began to applaud, “Jim Halpert everybody!” And even though he technically had a few more slides to go, everyone began to get up and leave. It wasn’t exactly how Jim had pictured it going, but it seemed well received, and he couldn’t argue with that.
…
“Hey, David…” Jim answered the call on his cell phone. He was just about to eat lunch in the break room, and since the butterflies in his stomach had curbed his hunger the past few days, he was suddenly extremely hungry now that the presentation was over. He stared at his sandwich longingly as he spoke with David:
“Yeah, the presentation seemed to go pretty well… Well, you know, I think the people in this branch are gonna need to see the thing up and running before they’ll really take to it… Exactly… Michael wasn’t too bad, although he did cut me short by a few slides. Yeah, he told me before I made the presentation that it was ‘his house’… Oh, yeah, I can step up and correct him… no problem…”
And just as he was settling in for a long rehash of the morning’s events, she came in and sat down at the table behind his, brown paper bag in hand.
“Well thanks… Yeah, while our old website was good, I think this is a definite step up… All right. Yeah, um, actually, I wanted to talk to you about that…” Jim fumbled for some papers in his bag, praying silently that Pam wasn’t watching him, although he knew she was. “Okay, so I had to push everything back a day on the itinerary, because I kind of… forgot about Akron… Yes, they are easy to forget about. Thank you for understanding. And it’s a five and a half hour drive from Scranton, which other than Buffalo… Yeah… Well as long as you’re okay with that… Great. Thank you so much David. See you next Thursday.”
Jim gave a deep sigh as soon as he closed his phone and practically collapsed onto his sandwich. It was always nerve-wracking talking to David, but especially when he was trying to keep his spirits up about the reception of his idea by the branches. That’s when Jim heard the faintest of giggling behind him.
“Hey,” he turned and chuckled at her, smirking wildly as she picked at a bag of chips. “I’m guessing you saw me almost do a face plant into my ham and cheese.”
Pam tilted her head and inquired innocently, “Is that what they’re calling it nowadays?”
He could only shake his head in response, knowing he should’ve seen that one coming. And that’s when he realized that even though he was still bent out of shape about whatever romance had sparked between them—if he could even call it that—he found that he did miss Pam, his best friend, even more. He smiled at her and pulled out the chair next to him, “There’s room over here, if you want to…”
“Oh. Um…”
“I mean, you don’t have to—”
“No, it’s—”
“I won’t fire you or anything.”
“Heh. Okay…”
“Don’t think I can for something like that.”
“Good to know.”
She picked up the remainder of her lunch and sat herself down next to him. He could tell she was very conscious of their proximity, actually scooting away from him in the process of scooting forward, and it hurt his heart that she would consciously do such a thing. But he couldn’t blame her. They hadn’t talked in five months, and so of course she would be a little wary.
“Um… it’s good to see you again,” he stated, breaking the silence in the room. “And, talk to you too. It’s good that we’re… talking.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “I’m surprised that we haven’t talked in so long.”
“Well, my assistant makes most of my formal calls. And I have everyone’s extensions in the company directory, so there’s really no need to call the main line…” Jim looked up from his lunch and saw that the expression on her face signaled that she didn’t want his bumbling excuses. He laughed embarrassedly, “And you meant, just to call to say hi. No, yeah, I have been pretty bad about that.”
“Yeah…” Pam nodded. “And I would’ve called you, except I didn’t have your new number and I thought it would be weird to call your assistant—”
Jim shrugged, “Oh, yeah, cause I didn’t even give you… Let’s just pin this one on me, ‘kay”
“Okay,” Pam smiled softly. Jim could tell she was still holding back about something, but he didn’t want to push it. The last thing he needed was to get into an argument with an employee, especially if it was about a “relationship.”
“So, I have a question,” he quickly changed topics, “what was going on with Angela and Dwight?”
Pam’s eyes lit up, “Oh! You don’t—do you know?”
“I thought… they were dating.”
“They were dating.”
“Ohh…”
As they sat there, eating their lunches and gossiping about their coworkers, Jim began to finally relax for the first time in weeks. As much as he enjoyed the work of the corporate world, nothing pleased him more than being in his comfort zone and talking with his best friend, and now that the ice had been broken, there was nothing that was going to keep him apart from her.
But he wasn’t going to fall for her again. At least, not until he was sure she felt the same way.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Sorry for the delay on this one! I thought I would've had tome to write more this past week, but you know how life always gets in the way. Hope this chapter is as well-received as the first one!
Chapter End Notes:
Up next, Jim throws a Lunch Launch Party.
How was this chapter? I was shooting for 56% decent this time. ;)
How was this chapter? I was shooting for 56% decent this time. ;)
