The Checklist by Addie Woolridge (famous ebook reader txt) 📕

Glancing over at her temporary office, she realized that if she hurried, she could theoretically get the outlines to Jared before midnight. “You sure you don’t need anything more?”

“Yup. Get a move on.”

She wasn’t going to look a deadline-saving horse in the mouth. “Thanks, Tim. See you tomorrow.”

With that she began cramming things into her purse with a sort of haphazard inattention that made her cringe, then dashed out of the warehouse. After unlocking the car, she threw the gift bag into the passenger seat, only marginally aware of the contents tumbling out as she rushed to ship the documents off to Jared under the wire.

“Dylan, you’re in the paper!” Her father burst into her room clutching an iPad, the font blown up extra large so he wouldn’t need his glasses.

Searching through the fog of sleep deprivation, she tried to discern if this was part of some incoherent dream she was having or if her father was actually making his way toward her. The angles of Henry’s clean-shaven face were dramatically lit, like he was telling a story around a campfire with a flashlight, not bursting into her room shouting nonsense with a tablet.

“I mean, it isn’t your name—oh! Sorry, Milo.” Her father stopped talking as he tripped over the gargantuan dog at the foot of her bed. Milo grunted in protest, the scrape of his paws on the wood floor pulling Dylan into reality.

“Uh-huh. Dad, it’s early.”

“It’s five fifteen. This woman says something about Technocore employee bags and describes you,” Henry said, speaking at unreasonable decibels. Reaching out, her father grabbed her foot and shook her leg, forcing Dylan to roll over and open one eye. Henry was real and furiously waving his tablet at her.

“I don’t—”

“Here.” Henry thrust the device at her with zeal, the glow blinding her temporarily. “I need to find the light,” he mumbled to himself, relinquishing her foot. As her eyes adjusted, Dylan could hear her father’s socked feet shuffle around the room, searching for the switch. “Damn it, Milo. Move.”

She was just about to tell him the switch was over by the door when the story caught her eye:

On Thursday morning, the Examiner received an exclusive invitation to observe the underpinnings of an employee-appreciation extravaganza arranged by none other than Technocore’s embattled CEO, Tim Gunderson. Our reporter arrived at an isolated West Seattle warehouse that Gunderson rented for the day in order to surprise his staff with items he termed “personalized, bomb-ass swag.” Trailed closely by a consultant doing damage control, Gunderson walked through the massive operation of over 35 freelance seamstresses, engravers, organization professionals, plaque makers, and swag artists, all of whom had been commissioned to create more than 2,500 employee “thank-you bags” in under 12 hours.

“This wasn’t supposed to come out until Sunday,” Dylan grumbled, the sleep beginning to lift from her brain. Somewhere in her secondary consciousness, she could hear her father stumbling around the room looking for a light switch and mumbling encouraging things about her not being named explicitly.

Gunderson, who’s been in the news multiple times for a series of mishaps, wanted to show everyone he’d turned over a new leaf. However, evidence of the improved foliage was scant on the ground.

As Gunderson ignored warnings from his consultant, the freelancers became increasingly irritated by his whims and the unexpected long hours. “It’s certainly something we are concerned about,” said Susan Moore, president of the freelancers’ union. “It is typical of these tech guys to assume that a freelancer is there to be worked to the bone.” When asked if there could be legal repercussions for Gunderson and Technocore, Moore replied, “I don’t have all the facts yet. But yes, we are concerned, and we will be investigating the conditions Mr. Gunderson asked his freelancers to work under.”

Given the stakes, why Gunderson, often referred to as Gunderpants on employee social media accounts, dismissed the good advice of his consultant remains a mystery to the Examiner. At one point, the consultant could be seen crawling around the warehouse floor arranging sewing machine cables and begging the CEO to do something more meaningful for employees, like changes to the break room and parking facilities, as a way of saying thank you.

“I wasn’t crawling on the floor,” Dylan said as the lights flicked on. Henry let out a triumphant squawk before returning to the bed and peering over her shoulder. Looking up at her father, Dylan asked, “Does this get any better?”

Henry shrugged in a way that reminded Dylan of her mother and said, “Honestly? Not really.”

“I need coffee,” Dylan said.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

This is not how I envisioned my Friday, Dylan thought as she waited for the light to change. While she waited, she eyed the spilled contents of the staff-appreciation bag still lying on the passenger-side floor. She was cold and tired. The embroidered fleece jacket stared back at her, looking comfortable. It was so early; she could sneak into the office and take it off before anyone saw her in personalized synthetic fabric. As she reached over to grab the jacket, her breath caught in her throat. There, in lovely script italics, was the wrong name.

Or, rather, the right first name but a very wrong last name. Forcing her freak-out aside, she wondered if anyone at Technocore was named Dylan Chavez. Maybe Tim didn’t know her last name?

Dread squeezed at her insides, making her skin prickle with sweat. Tim knew her name. There was no Dylan Chavez. There was, however, a Rebecca Chavez in what was left of the front-end development team. The file Tim had sent over wasn’t just out of order; it was wrong.

She made it to the office in record time. Slamming her car door with her hip, she took a sip of the hot coffee her father had prepared, grateful for his unexpected thoughtful gesture and relieved to find it wasn’t a reheat of Bernice’s leftovers from the evening before. Not for the first time, Dylan