Vile Cows

With the rage inside her bubbling over, Anna said in a scarily calm voice, "I came here to chat with my friends, but it seems I never really had any here. I thought we could catch up, but I guess not."

Her 'friends' just stared at her, without a trace of the warmth that had been in their eyes previously.

After she said that, her calm voice started to shake and get louder. "Just because I got promoted, did you really have to be such vile cows?"

However, before she could finish saying her piece, a senior accountant—the manager of this floor—walked over to them.

"Anna, how are you? You're looking very well." He lightly patted her shoulders, turned her around, and led her away. While making small talk, he took her into the kitchen to get some coffee.

There was nothing she could do except be led away; he was far more senior in the company than her and was the manager of this floor. Despite her recent promotion, he possessed much more authority than she did.

Even though she knew he was just trying to defuse the situation, Anna couldn't help but direct some of her anger at him in her heart.

'This grumpy old man had to come over before I could get what I wanted to say off my chest!

'I very rarely get angry, which says a lot about how awful that situation made me feel.

'Why did he only intervene when I was going to say something to them? Why didn't he step in when they were spreading lies about me?'

Indignant at the injustice of the situation, Anna quickly made some excuses and headed back up to the top floor. She stopped off at another floor on the way to make the copies. Needless to say, it was less eventful that time.

…

Buzz!

"Barov, can you come into my office please?" said Roland over the intercom.

Barov quickly put his work aside and walked into Roland's office. When he looked at his boss, he saw a rarely-seen nervous expression on his face; something serious had clearly happened!

"What is it, sir?"

"I'm worried; Anna seems quite down. I'm not imagining things, am I? I thought she'd be pleased with the new promotion."

Barov looked away and tutted exasperatedly.

"I don't know how she feels about the promotion, but I know she's not upset because of that. Apparently, there was an incident when she went to make those copies for you."

"What kind of incident?" growled Roland. His nervous expression was replaced with a cold, vicious one.

Seeing his reaction, Barov pouted. "Sir, when I told you I was involved in an incident last month, why didn't you react like this?"

"What kind of incident occurred?" snarled Roland, repeating his question.

"Sigh. There seemed to be some office bullying from Anna's old co-workers on the sixth floor. When Anna was about to argue back, the floor's senior accountant intervened."

"Is that so?" he said in a calm, frigid voice. A cruel gleam flashed through Roland's eyes.