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Story Notes:
I do not own the Office or any of its IP. 
Author's Chapter Notes:
Pam's POV on the day Jim didn't start work.

Pam yawned. It was a slow day in the office. Twenty games of FreeCell, another ten of standard Windows solitaire, and now three of Minesweeper were all she had to show for six hours of sitting in front of her computer. No phone calls. No copies. Not even a patented Michael Scott “emergency” for her to solve by pulling out the crayons and construction paper she always kept hidden under the lip of her desk (right next to Dwight’s nunchucks that he thought she didn’t know about). Nothing.

 

She tapped her fingers on the desk. The day had started so promisingly, too: oh, not promising of actual productivity, but Michael had bounced into the office excitedly, even on time for once, telling her that a new salesman was supposed to start today and they had to get everything ready. In the first thirty minutes of the workday, she’d helped him set up the VCR in his office (“no, Pam, the break room isn’t a sufficiently intimate setting. Why are you looking at me like that?”) and for the first hour after that he had been bouncing in and out of the reception area looking for “Jimbo” to come by. He’d had her call his number three times, but no one picked up and the voicemail box was full. When it had gradually appeared that he wasn’t coming, though, Michael had retreated into his office and—to her shock, awe, and amazement—actually buckled down to work, apparently as a cure for his disappointment, leaving her alone to do…well, nothing, actually, but it was a nice change from his usual demeanor.

 

Hm, maybe she should make sure people disappointed him more often.

 

But no, Michael wasn’t likely to react to disappointment the same way twice. Certainly not the same productive way twice. So if she engineered another disappointment, it was almost certain that she’d spend the whole day fending off his frantic energy, rather than getting time to herself like today. She should just accept this day as a gift, a boring but nonetheless pleasant gift, and resign herself to whatever tomorrow might bring.

 

It would have been nice to have someone else in the office, though, she thought. Someone to sit across from Dwight and draw some of his fire, maybe—although today even Dwight had been more normal than usual, taking his cue from his boss’s unusual quietude. Maybe the new guy would be someone she could be friends with. She hadn’t really had a friend in the office since…well, ever. She’d tried with Meredith, but the only way she’d been able to keep up with her drinking had been to slip Roy half her drinks, and that had backfired when he’d gotten sloppy drunk and wanted to “do it” in the bathroom stall. While she was pooping. They hadn’t gone out much after that. Phyllis was like a mother figure, but the kind of mother (quite unlike her own) who had strange-but-high expectations and was equally likely to randomly scold her for wearing a top that was too revealing (when really, it didn’t even expose her throat, let alone her breasts) or bake her an unprompted tray of cookies. Better to keep her at arms length. And Kelly…well, Kelly was technically her friend, but everyone, even the temp, knew that Kelly was best in small doses. Very small. Angela was out, as were the various men in the office: too weird, too creepy, too shy.

 

Well, there was Roy, of course, but for all he was her fiancé, he wasn’t really her friend. They’d never had that kind of relationship, even growing up. They were comfortable together, of course, and the sex wasn’t bad, and she was happy. Dammit, she was. But she wasn’t going to go crying on his shoulder if something went wrong, or anything, and God forbid she try to make small talk while the game was on. And his friends…well, Darryl wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t her friend, and the rest of them were on the same no-fly list as her own male colleagues.

 

It would have been nice to have a friend. Her first thought was to say that if this guy was willing to work for Michael Scott he was probably in the same bucket as all the rest, but then he hadn’t shown up, and that boded well for his sanity and general friend-possibility, except that (Catch-22 alert!) if he never showed up for work wasn’t ever going to be her friend, was he? And anyway, there was no reason to think he’d even want to be her friend. She was plain, boring, yawny Pam, and even if there was a cool, not creepy, normal person in the office they’d probably have cool, not creepy, normal friends of their own and not want to spend their time with a coworker.

 

It was really a shame Dwight had gotten the IT guy to uninstall the pinball game they used to have on these computers. “Unethical depiction of gambling” my ass, she thought, then snorted at the fact that she’d been reduced to mental cursing by the boring nature of the day. Fortunately no one seemed to notice the snort—the last thing she needed was a harangue from Dwight about “distracting behavior” or another lecture from evil-mom-Phyllis about ladylike behavior. Not that Phyllis herself was super ladylike, but sometimes these things seemed to trigger in her—maybe as self-protection from Angela.

 

And here was Michael, about to make her life hell…or not, as he shrugged on his coat and headed out the door with a surprisingly subdued “bye Pam.” She glanced at the clock and realized with a shock that it was 4:58, and indeed the exodus had begun: Stanley out the door as soon as Michael cleared it, then Kevin, Kelly, and the rest. Even Toby, who often stayed late to finish confidential paperwork without other people lingering over his shoulder, was out the door by 5:07.

 

But not Pam.

 

No, Pam was waiting for Roy Anderson to remember he had a fiancé and come up the stairs from the warehouse to get her, since they carpooled every day from the house they lived in. Like they had for the past three years. And yet, once again, Roy was not here as the clock ticked over to 5:15, then 5:20. Pam had a sinking feeling in her stomach, and crossed over to the window, peeking out of the blinds to discover that, yes, once again, Roy’s truck was not where he’d left it this morning when they pulled in (shockingly) on time.

 

Roy had left her.

 

Again.

 

Just as she was about to pick up the receiver and call home (hoping against hope that she wouldn’t then be immediately dialing Poor Richard’s to actually find him), the phone rang for the first time that day.

 

“Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam.”

Chapter End Notes:

Yes, it's a cliffhanger, but I promise we'll get the phone call next time. 

 

Also, it turns out that starting a new fulltime tenure-track job is a real time-sink, so that's why I haven't been around as much. So it's good that I'm procrastinating from grading to write this, right? Just a thought for those of you planning academic AUs: not a ton of free time out there. 


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