Samantha's Solitaire

Was that the boss approaching? Samantha could discern his footsteps during a Spanish bull-run stampede, if she needed to. She clicked on the taskbar to hide her Solitaire. Nobody touches my Solitaire expertise after 22 years of gainful employment, she thought proudly. She swiveled on her seat 180 degrees just before the six-four boss towered the cube entrance.

“Hey!” she said preemptively, faking excitement. Relief! Two seconds late and he would have known why she made no progress writing the test plan for the 3.2 version of AccountAx™.

He scanned around her cube, looked at her PC monitor behind her, then looked at her. “You on track to have your test plan go for review by tomorrow, COB?”

“Working on it right now as a matter of fact,” she replied, aware how artfully she evaded answering his question. Neither “yes”, nor “no”. She could have won an Oscar for that performance.

Smiling, he nodded a couple of times at her, then left, but not before glancing at her LCD monitor once again.

Samantha turned around towards the screen. A window had captured most of her desktop, a window loaded with big yellow-magenta flashing letters spelling “Great Score!”