The Dirt Field

I am a proposal writer (proposals = where creative writing goes to die) and this past Monday, my company had an important proposal due at noon. Fred, one of the company executives, insisted on delivering the proposal and showed up in our office at 11am to pick up the package. He waited while the proposal team sprinted around like we were on fire, putting documents in binders and shoving everything into the large Staples box that was being used for delivery.

Once the box was packed, several of the writers struggled to wrap it in brown packing paper. By that point, we had less than an hour until it needed to be delivered to a location thirty minutes away, so one of the proposal managers panicked and snapped, “Somebody needs to go with Fred in the car to finish wrapping the box.” I was standing nearby holding the Mapquest directions, which apparently counted as volunteering.

The other proposal manager grabbed the partially-wrapped box and all of the packing supplies and hustled Fred and me downstairs, where a car was waiting. The delivery vehicle turned out to be an old Jeep with 220,000 miles on it (the most reliable choice in a pinch situation), and the backseat that would serve as my production area was full of equestrian gear. Evidently the vehicle doubles as a farm truck in its spare time. Also, I am allergic to horses.

The proposal manager shoved me into the cramped backseat and dropped the box on my lap.  Fred got in and handed the directions to the driver and we took off towards the highway, while I struggled to gift-wrap the box in an enormous sheet of paper. Have you ever wrapped a large, heavy box that was confined to your lap while you rode in the back of a speeding Jeep? It’s a logistical nightmare, especially considering that I don’t wrap. People like me are the reason gift bags were invented. Things went farther downhill when I re-read the packaging instructions and saw that each side of the box had to be labeled with the box number, both on the wrapping paper and the box itself. I read this after the box was wrapped.

By the time the box was numbered, wrapped (for the third time), and adorned with the delivery label, I was sweating profusely (partly from the struggle and partly from the complete lack of air conditioning), frighteningly carsick, and sniffling from an allergy attack. It didn’t help that another car merged into us on the highway, forcing our driver to veer onto the shoulder at 70 mph.  We pulled up in front of the delivery site and when Fred opened my door to collect the package, I jumped out. “Oh,” he asked politely, “did you want to come in?”

No, of course not. I just needed a minute to possibly puke on the sidewalk.

After the proposal was delivered, Fred and the other man decided that we should get lunch. Since I enjoy spending my hard-earned money on awkward lunches with complete strangers, I agreed and spent the next hour sitting in my sweaty clothes in a restaurant booth, picking at a salad while making small talk about their children, all of whom are my age.

The icing on the cake was when, on our way down the Dulles Toll Road back to the office, the driver remarked, “I don’t have a Smart Tag/EZ Pass because they use those to collect information about you. And I don’t use the pre-printed envelopes from the IRS because they use those to collect information as well.”

Getting back to my cubicle never felt so good.