“Five objectives,” Management said, and Elaine immediately got out a notebook and numbered a page from one to five, “for enhancing the work environment at HiTek.”

“Fire Flip,” I said.

“Do you know what she did to me the other day?” Sarah said. “She filed all my lab charts under L for lab.”

“Should I write that down?” Elaine said.

“No,” Gina said, “but I want you all to write this down. Brittany’s birthday is on the eighteenth and you’re all invited. Two o’clock. Presents, cake, and no Power Rangers. I put my foot down. You can have any kind of party you want, I told Brittany, but not Power Rangers.”

Dr. O’Reilly had finally sat down at a table in the middle of the room and had taken off his jacket. It wasn’t an improvement. All it meant was that you could see his tie, which was seriously out of style.

“Have you ever seen the Power Rangers?” Gina was saying.

“I can’t come,” Sarah said. “I’m running in a ten-K race with Paul Ottermeyer.”

“In Safety? I thought you were going with Ted,” Gina said.

“Ted has intimacy issues,” Sarah said. “And until he learns to deal with them, there’s no point in our trying to have a committed relationship.”

“So you’re settling for a ten-K race?” Gina said.

“You should try stair-walking,” Elaine from Personnel said. “It gives you a much better full-body workout than running.”

I leaned my chin on my hand and considered Dr. O’Reilly’s tie. Ties are a lot like the rest of men’s clothes. Almost everything’s in. That wasn’t true until recently. Each era had its own fashion in ties. Striped cravats were in in the 1860s and lavender ties in the 1890s. Bow ties were big in the twenties, hand-painted hula dancers in the forties, neon daisies in the sixties, and anything that wasn’t in was out. But now all of the above are in, along with bolos, bandannas, and the ever-popular no tie at all. Bennett’s tie wasn’t any of those—it was just ugly.