Travels in Eire #40

It felt so strange waking up on Monday morning earlier than she had in the past couple of weeks. It was time to return to her research job in Manhattan. Cailin knew that the news of her pending departure would have spread like wildfire through the office even though she had only met with her boss, Rob, for lunch on Friday. That was if he leaked the conversation. She also suspected that Nick had been blabbing about her dumping him to all her friend over the weekend, and some of those friends worked at the office. Fortified with the confidence that she could handle all of this, she put on her power look and headed off to work.

This was summer in New York City, so even while it was still early in the day, the humidity was rolling in. Cailin wore a cotton shift dress with a sweater in the morning so she would be comfortable by the day's end. The heels on her white sandals tapped on the marble floor as she exited the elevator on the 5th floor. She took a deep breath as she entered the office doors.

To her surprise, the first person she passed, Rob's receptionist, turned to her saying, “Way to go Cailin.” And there were more of these compliments as she walked by open offices down the hall to her work area. She expected this universal support had more to do with Nick than anything else. Everyone was supporting her in getting rid of him. She hardly expected this. Maybe Rob had kept her desire to work remotely very quiet.

Cailin shared a work space with another young woman researcher for the firm. Bonnie was still having a great time clubbing and dating a vast array of young men. She was not ready to settle down at all. But she was fun to work with and quite capable of supporting Cailin here in New York while Cailin worked in Derry and kept up on what she needed to do for the firm.

Bonnie's desk was empty and Cailin figured she must be off doing some research for an assignment. Cailin dropped off her purse and headed to Rob's office. She was hoping to find out if Rob had made a decision about her working from Ireland. She really needed to have a job that would support her and this would be the best way.

“Hi Rob, can we chat for a few?” Cailin was upbeat and cheery as she stood in Rob's doorway.

“Cailin, I've taken a lot of time to think about your proposal to work from Ireland. Here's what I'd like you to do today. Write up an agreement that we can both live with that spells out all the details of how this will work. I also want you to put in it a clause that it is a temporary and trial situation for 3 months. After that we will renegotiate the details of the agreement, or cancel it. Does that sound fair enough?” Rob seemed to have thought about this a lot over the weekend.

“Rob, does that mean you are approving this idea?” Cailin could not believe what she was hearing.

“Hold on Cailin. I have to get approval from the partners, but after much thought I figured if we treated it like an outside consultant contract, I would feel much better about it. Your pay would be the same. I'm not sure how we would handle benefits, but we'll leave that up to HR.”

“Rob, that's wonderful. I'll get to work on the contract immediately. I also have some outstanding research and will finish that up by mid-week. I'd like to have next week off to transition over to Northern Ireland and get everything set up and settled. Would that work?” Cailin was already thinking ahead. This is what made her such a good researcher.

“Okay, Cailin, so off with you and get me that contract so we can make your dreams come true,” Rob said this with a wink and a smile. He had heard about Nick too, and this was his way of telling Cialin she did well to have finally gotten rid of him.

Cailin could barely wait until her lunch break to call Darren. He would be just about off work for the day. they only had a few minutes, but she could hear how excited Darren was in his voice. His big question was “When?”. And all Cailin could tell him was very soon. She didn't want to spoil it and didn't even have her ticket for her flight back yet.

She and Bonnie went to lunch together and she told Bonnie about her plans. Ever the adventurous, Bonnie was delighted and said that would be great working that way, thinking she might get a trip to Ireland out of this. Cailin felt it was more likely she would be making trips back to New York, which was great because she could visit her family too.

In the meantime Rob scheduled a meeting for all the staff at the end of the day. Cailin expected he would be announcing her departure and plans to work from Ireland. All she needed was approval of the other partners, but from what Rob had said, that was almost a moot point.