The time was well past any normal person's working hours. The brunette stood behind her desk and gazed over the streets as she watched the miniature people wrapped in their overcoats and scarves with knit toboggans pulled tightly over their ears. The sparkling city lights hit the snowflakes as the falling precipitation began to color the ground white. She knew when time came for her to head home, the pristine white blanket would already be turned to a gray sludge. So for now, she'd enjoy the view while the snow was fresh.

A glance at the double clocks on her far wall informed her that she had about five minutes before her video call. She double checked her appearance in the wall mirror in an attempt to make sure she didn't look as exhausted as she felt. "I should have slept in a little longer today," she muttered to nobody. Unfortunately, preparation for this meeting needed to be completed which is why she'd now been holed up in her office fifteen hours today. She quickly applied a light coat of soft blush to her cheek bones and a quick coat of lipstick and readied to connect to the call.

As her finger hovered over the button, a vacuum cleaner began roaring like a freight train in the hallway without warning. Agitated, she ran to the doorway yelling for the worker to turn off the machine. The woman had her back turned and seemed to be dancing while she worked as indicated by the earbuds which were probably connected to her phone dropped into her uniform pocket. The brunette franticly reached down, removed her shoe, and threw it as hard as possible down the hallway, finally getting the cleaner's attention, motioning for her to turn off the machine. She then slammed her office door and ran back to her computer, just in time to connect to the meeting.

"Beca Mitchell here. New York office. My apologies for being late." Internally she rolled her eyes because she was only a minute past the designated time but better to err on the cautious side. She needed to learn the small island's culture in order to not make any inadvertent faux paus.

Ninety minutes later, the meeting was finally over. She laid her head on her desk. "Please tell me why I had to be assigned this project in Guam, of all places." Beca groaned as she thought through the complexity of working with the small U.S. territory half the world away. She was quickly learning that things were run differently in the tiny little Western Pacific island. The people had their own time-table, generally not rushed but exceedingly picky about the work completed. "This is going to be a long venture," she groaned.

Another glance outside let her know the snowing had eased some, but the drifts were still building and walking home would not be an option. "Uber it is." She had quickly realized that the quieter the floor became as people left, the more she talked out-loud to herself. "Now I just need half a dozen cats, and I'll be on my way to being a crazy cat lady!"

Beca gathered her outer garments so she could bundle herself before leaving the building. She went to slip on her snow boots so she wouldn't have to carry them, but something was missing. As she looked around the office, confusion crept through her as she could only find one shoe. She racked her brain to try to recall where the other could be then recalled throwing it at the woman running the obnoxiously loud vacuum right before her meeting. "Great, that's all I need. Now I have to go out in this mess with only my snow boots." After yanking open her office door to see if she could locate the wayward shoe, she saw it sitting in the middle of the door opening with a note slipped inside.

I am so so so sorry. I hope I didn't disturb you too much. I assumed nobody was on the floor because it was incredibly late. Anyhoo, here's your shoe back. [Nice Chucks – I bet you have a pair to match all your business suits ;)] And here's an IOU for coffee … or something. Sorry again. ~ C

Irritated all over again, she crumpled the note and tossed it into the trash can. After pulling on her shoe and slipping into her boots, Beca went down to the main lobby to dress for the chill and wait on her Uber.

New York University's School for Professional Studies offered a degree with an Environment/Energy Policy Concentration. Several teams had submitted project initiation feasibility studies and business plans for projects of their choosing as a part of their Sustainable Development course requirements. The top project had been picked up by Beca's company to continue and summarily assigned to her to put into motion.

While Guam was being serviced by several companies for water purification projects, the small island still relied on expensive petroleum imports for electricity and transportation as no production of fossil fuels existed in that area. The project submitted by the students proposed a means to provide affordable solar energy to individuals and businesses as well as eventually to the military base. Beca was impressed by the feasibility studies the students had done; she just wasn't impressed with being in charge of the foreign project.

Monday… Beca hated Mondays more than anything. This was the first weekend she had allowed herself to not work on the Guam project. When she was first handed the project, she had spent much of her own time reviewing the project initiation paperwork to make sure the company hadn't make an error in taking on this project. This weekend, she forced herself to not even think about work. She had busted her ass with fifteen plus hour work days all last week getting ready for the first conference call. She rarely left her office, even for lunch or dinner. She was getting to know the delivery guys pretty well.

"This week is going to fantabulous," she mumbled to herself as she picked out a dark blue suit with white pinstripes. She saw the countless pairs of Chucks lined up in her closet and chuckled as she selected a navy pair to pull onto her feet. "Why Ms. Cleaning Lady, yes, I do indeed have a pair to match all my suits." She chuckled thinking about the note the woman had left her after the incident with the vacuum cleaner. Beca also found a pair of dress flats to toss in her bag in case she ended up having a face to face meeting with someone in the office.

Whistling a chipper tune, Beca unlocked the door to her office and was immediately faced with a horrible stench. "What the fuck?" She pressed her face into the crook of her elbow and ventured a few short steps into the office. Her trash was over-flowing with delivery containers of food from the previous week. Half eaten boxes of take-out were scattered on the conference table. Another trash can had papers spilling over onto the floor. What she didn't quite realize was her office was in the exact state as when she had left a few days earlier.

She tossed her bag far enough for it to land on the couch then turned to make her way to her boss's office. "Jessica, is she available?" Beca motioned towards the tall door leading to her nemesis's office. The assistant motioned for her to be quiet and to take a seat. A few minutes later, Jessica picked up the phone and pressed a button. "Ms. Mitchell is here to see you." After listening for a few minutes, she hung up the phone and motioned towards the door. "She'll see you now."

Beca steeled herself as she pushed open the door which was the only barrier between herself and her boss. Beca tentatively stood at her boss's doorway. She shook her head, forcing herself to take a step inside the door as she tried to convince herself that she was not afraid of the woman who was sitting at her large desk, facing away from the brunette project manager. The terrifying woman was staring out her window over the city, her blonde hair pulled up into a tight bun. "Spit it out Mitchell. I don't have all day." The blonde spun around to face Beca and stood, placing her hands on either side of the paperwork spread out on her desk, leaning forward in an imposing manner. "Let me guess, you messed up on the Guam project already." Her steely glare was frightening at best. She made no secrets that Beca wasn't her favorite employee.

Beca screwed up her face. "No. Absolutely not," she replied indignantly. "The Guam project is going well and on schedule. Dare I say it's ahead of schedule, but it's too quickly to make assumptions."

The leggy blonde turned back to gaze out the window at the dingy snow that was now packed along the edges of the sidewalks after several routes of the plows which kept the streets passable. "Then what is it Mitchell?"

"Ummm my office?" Now Beca felt as though her complaints were trivial. Beca fought the urge to drop her eyes to the ground.

"Hhhhmmmmft. You have one of the better offices – sizable, nice view. I don't see the issue." The brunette could tell that her boss was in one of her moods, the kind where anything she said would be the wrong thing.

Beca wasn't sure how to bring up the condition of her office without sounding self-indulgent. "It's nasty. I don't think the cleaning crew has touched it in a while. Today's Monday, and a stench of stale food hit me particularly hard when I opened the door this morning." Beca just blurted out her issue hoping she didn't sound like a petulant child.

Her boss rummaged through some papers on her desk, found a folder and took a seat. She motioned for Beca to do the same. After flipping through some sheets, she looked back at Beca. "This," she waved the folder in the air, "is a weekly report from the cleaning crew supervisor. Their team only works between certain hours in the evening, and it seems as though that's when you've chosen to occupy your office."

"There's a vast time difference between here and Guam, like fourteen hours huge." Beca furrowed her brows as she found herself becoming defensive since she had been working her ass off on the project the past week. "What am I supposed to do?"

"I guess you are on your own Mitchell. Do what you do best – problem solve. That or clean your office yourself." The woman turned her back to Beca. "Anything else?"

"No Ms. Posen." The brunette was biting her tongue to keep from saying something she could very well later regret. She was also quite careful to not slam the tall office door on her way out.

Beca stomped down the hallway to her own office, stopping at the custodial closet to grab some trash bags and air freshener. She stood outside her office and pulled her shirt up to cover her nose and mouth. Shaking open one trash bag, she raced in to grab all of the old food containers first. Once those were safely tucked inside the bag, she tied it off and trotted down the hallway to the incinerator shoot.

Returning to her office, she sprayed the interior with the air freshener to kill the remaining stench. Once the air was tolerable, she set about emptying the other trash cans and picking up the paper overflow off the floor. Surprisingly enough, getting rid of the offensive left-over food and the trash strewn over the floor did not take long. However, she knew her office wasn't really clean since the floors hadn't been touched nor had the surfaces been wiped down. But for now it was tolerable.

Beca docked her laptop and powered it up. While waiting for the computer to boot, she pulled what else she needed from her bag. Launching Outlook, she immediately looked at her weekly calendar to see what her time looked like each day. She buzzed Jessica to see if she could get a copy of the cleaning crew's schedule e-mailed to her. While she couldn't avoid working late, now that the project was under way, Beca decided she could probably make time to eat out of her office on most evenings. Perhaps this could be her compromise to have a clean office. She may not know her schedule every day up front, but she could leave a note for the cleaning staff every morning when she came in letting them know when she'd be out of her office.

Despite Monday being one of the days designated for project team calls, Beca felt it necessary to free herself from the office for a bit of time to allow the cleaning staff to get in. She'd lived on take-out and delivery for so long that going out was a luxury. She wasn't sure if going out to her favorite Chinese delivery place counted, but somehow the food tasted different, better. Ordering something different pushed her out of her comfort zone and helped her to relax and actually feel she was rewarding her hard work with dinner out. "I really have to get out more," she muttered to herself.

Glancing at her watch, Beca realized that she could probably safely return to her office. Once there, she shrugged off her coat and tossed it over towards the coat rack, not caring that it landed on the floor. As a different odor tickled her nose, Beca stopped in the middle of her office. She sniffed once, then again, not quite being able to place the smell. Her coffee mug was sitting in the center of her desk on a light pink piece of paper.

Thanks for leaving the note about when you'd be out to dinner. I didn't want to disturb you again. I tried to make sure your office was extra clean since I missed it all last week. I even used the good smelling spray, not the nasty industrial kind. I heard you are still going to be working late nights, so I brought you some fresh coffee. It's better than your Keurig. Have a good night. ~ C

The brunette surveyed her office as she took a sip of her coffee. "C" seemed nice enough, but Beca didn't have time to think about the cleaning crew. She had work to do before the team call.

As she normally liked to connect to the team calls early, Beca was about to start the meeting when the vacuum started roaring outside in the hallway again. How could one machine be so obnoxious and fill the air with such noise pollution? "Seriously?" Her ire quickly died as she couldn't find herself getting angry at the woman who had so nicely brought her coffee even after Beca had lodged a complaint. She trotted to the door and peeked out. She was not expecting what she saw.

A few doors down was the cleaning lady dressed in a shapeless, drab industrial uniform which hung off of her body, hair tucked under her awful looking uniform hat. The woman had her back turned with her earbuds in. This time there was no doubt that she was dancing as the machine emitting the loud shvoooooooo noise was her partner. The woman she danced to the tunes in her ears, pushing the vacuum forward and tossing her left hand out then pulling back on the machine to do a little shimmy.

Beca started to approach her but decided against it. So she just took off her shoe and threw it again before retreating to her office to start the meeting on time. The woman would get the hint. She felt a little guilty but soon forgot as the meeting was underway.

As she was getting ready to leave after the meeting, she opened her office door to retrieve her shoe which she knew would be waiting, probably with another note.

I brought the coffee as a peace offering. Maybe next time you can also let me know when you have meetings, too. BTW the blue Chucks don't really match your pinstripe suit today. ~ C

The tone of the note didn't seem as kind as the others, but Beca realized that her actions were probably rude. She looked down at her shoes and shrugged her shoulders. "I'm not exactly known for my fashion," she chuckled as she headed towards home.