It was a testament to her level of emotional fatigue that Bisola walked right past the fleet of trucks and vehicles outside her building without actually really noticing them. What little part of her brain was still sparking was completely involved with trying to figure out how to either make her Aina Dinner Assignment sabotage proof or at least organize an elaborate escape plan from responsibility should things make like Chinua Achebe and fall apart.
Normally, though it wasn't in her job description, organising a small office celebration wasn't necessarily a huge deal. They did birthday parties for staff members all the time, they had vendors who knew the drill. It really came down to picking a date and making a bunch of phone calls.
Only... it didn't really just come down to that and believing it did was the kind of noob mistake that battle weary Bisola was determined never to make again.
These were the lessons she'd learned after years of one naive mistake after another. This assignment was a performance for a stage that wasn't even hers. The spotlight was Aina's. Bisola herself was simply the foil against which Aina was meant to shine. That meant, from the start, she was meant to fail. By the time she'd come to understand the rules of the game - by the time she'd even realized there was a game - the board was so stacked against her that it was a full time job just staying on it.
Now she needed to figure out which of two approaches would be the least easily used against her. If she went all out and booked somewhere super expensive it could be turned against her as an irresponsible use of resources and her trying (unsuccesfully) to "prove something".
On the other hand if she went too understated it could be misconstrued as her being incapable of doing better or, even worse, deliberately disrespecting the new team lead. In either scenario, Aina would most likely appear to "rescue" her... yet somehow, she would still end up very much the villian in everybody's eyes.
Bisola nibbled neurotically at already bitten nails worrying where the line was.
She saw the stream of people moving up and down the corridor of her floor, many of them looked like carpentars, builders and craftsman. At the back of her mind she figured someone was getting some construction work done.
She actually walked past her own open doorway when she saw it was the source of all the traffic.
It took till she was at her neighbor's door, staring in puzzlement at the wrong flat number. She turned around slowly, thoughts of nefarious co-workers and land mine strewn office parties finally swept from her mind.
Slowly, cautiously, she approached her open front door and peeped inside.
Her Granny's living room was a beehive of industry, filled to bursting with building materials, construction tools and a crowd of complete strangers.
She stepped in gingerly and almost immediately had to duck under a swinging spirit gauge.
"Ah! Sorry o!" a dust-covered guy in a safety helmet told her before he was swept away by someone waving a large roll of paper that looked suspiciously like a blueprint.
"That's ok," she said automatically even as the realization that this was very much NOT ok started to hit her.
First of all WHAT THE HELL.
Second of all... No, back to first, WHAT THE HELL!!?
"Abisola... Folorunso?"
Bisola turned to see a smallish, neat woman in a white jumpsuit and a red scarf reading her name off her phone and glancing at her hopefully.
"Ah. So you're the landlady.." she said giving Bisola a critical once over and then a mildly concerned look.