Smorgasbord short story – The System Administrator by Sally Cronin

Having worked for a chain of terrible bosses—the CEO who made appointments wait for half an hour across from his desk while he read through his correspondence (he used old memos if he had nothing new), the supervisor who kept track of the minutes it took me to use the restroom and every other task assigned, the three department heads who thought they were my supervisor and barraged me with conflicting directives, the CEO who expected me to turn over my grants to him to spend as he pleased and I was supposed to show every dollar was spent as I requested—I have to admit that we all need Martha working at our places of employment.

Smorgasbord - Variety is the spice of life

The System Administrator by Sally Cronin

Jennifer stood in the middle of the lift and stared at her black leather pumps. She noticed a scuff on the left side of the toe of the right shoe, realising that she had kicked the full waste basket a little harder than she thought at the time. She was weary and unusually tearful. It had been a tough week all round with particularly hard advertising revenue to achieve, but it had ended on the sourest note of all.

She managed a team of fifty telephone sales canvassers who sold high end car and luxury property advertising for the national online paper she worked for. These days both those markets were tough going. It seemed that people were hanging onto high ticket items waiting for a rise in demand for both.

However, her boss who lived in his ivory tower of an office on…

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