ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
Walking briskly this morning down Ulster Street to the Morris Road Metro Station in the fabled Old City District, Sally Dawkins casually rifled through her bag looking for her headphones for the ride to work.
However, she didn’t know that that today, she wouldn’t be needed them.
Jamming herself into the third-last carriage, the 29-year-old systems analyst came devastatingly close to putting her headphone in when a co-worker, Denise Carmichael, tapped her on the shoulder.
“Can you literally believe what just happened yesterday at that meeting? Crazy, huh? Can’t believe they’re going through with the merger,” she said.
“What’s the feeling in systems? Is the team ready for the change or are you doing to go back to the partners with a bit of a contingency plan until we know the hard facts?”
There was no feeling in the systems department. Not one that Dawkins was party to anyway.
Most of what Denise had just said to her hadn’t stuck – it hadn’t stuck because it was 7:07 am on a Tuesday morning.
“Ha, yeah. We’ll see what everyone thinks this morning and go from their,” replied Sally.
“I didn’t get time to read the proposal yesterday afternoon, I had a 4:45 call to the Quilpie office and yeah, just got on the train.”
To her abject horror, that wasn’t enough of a response to inoculate her colleague.
From there, the conversation shifted to their personal lives despite neither of them really knowing each other that well.
“She didn’t take any hints, she just kept talking about how her ex is trying to win custody over the dog,” she said.
“Then she told me more personal details, so I got off a stop early before the park.”
Dawkins then told The Advocate that she just got rained on and accosted by a tramp in Remienko Park, which ruined the high from her pre-breakfast jog.
More to come.
