[ WP ] Counting the seconds

It took me a minute to notice but the clock had actually stopped working. I looked around the surrounding bay of cubicles to see if anyone else had noticed but they all seemed to be on calls. Sarah looked like she was on a sales call, James might have just been nodding along looking off at the ceiling pretending to be on a call, and Julie was almost certainly on the phone with her boyfriend planning dinner and a movie for later that evening. Just to be sure, I made another quick survey of my three cubemates. 
 
 “ Oh, tell me about it! ” James said into his mouthpiece. Yep, they were all pretty much checked out. I stood up and said something or other, not important really falling on deaf ears and all, about going to get some batteries to replace the worn out ones in the back of the clock. I took it off from it ’ s dangling spot on the wall and brought it down to my desk, just to figure out what size battery it needed. It looked like a D-cell, which was I made a mental not of as being odd, since I was expecting something more like a AAA, but nope. It was a D-cell. 
 
 It wasn ’ t until then that I realized: I have no idea where the batteries are. I don ’ t think I ’ d ever seen one in the supply closet, and I didn ’ t honestly feel like going around to look for them. I made a quick call to facilities, no one picked up. I looked up the number for the building manager, but no one was there. I got up to go see if my boss had any advice, but he was in a closed door meeting, or a conference call I didn ’ t really check all that hard. 
 
 By the time I got through all of that it had been a full fifteen minutes. I knew because I checked my watch, and wondered how all that could have possibly taken so long, but then I remembered the eight minutes I spent looking at pictures of cats, and watching a TED talk. 
 
 When I got back to my seat, James said something to me. I didn ’ t notice at first, I thought he was pretending to be on the phone still. He took off his headset though and said, “ Hey, do you know what time it is? ” 
 
 I did, “ 4:32, ” since I had just checked my watch, which was digital, and I was feeling pretty good about myself. 
 
 “ Great, thanks. ” It felt good to feel appreciated. It wasn ’ t every day I got the chance to feel good about my job as a sales rep, but I did. I stood up to glance over my cubicle wall at my bosses office to notice that yes, he was in fact still in a meeting, or a conference call or whatever. Then I sat down again, turned the clock over on its face, and started winding until the big hand was pointing to the twelve and the little hand was pointing to the five. I had dones a good day ’ s work. 
 
 “ See you tomorrow, James, Sarah, Julie. ” 
 
 “ Bye Dave. ”
