Prompt Images
“Grab a seat. It’s an honor to have you here.”
“Thanks for seeing me on such short notice.”
“Absolutely. That’s the job. I’m here when any employee needs help. So what can I do for you today?”
“And I assume there is also some discretion about what is said inside this office, right? Does that come with this whole thing?”
“Absolutely. To the degree that I can keep information between the two of us, of course. Nothing leaves this room, until it has to.”
“Okay, well I appreciate that. Because this is pretty personal. I’m sure it’ll be a public issue at some point, but if we can hold it as long as possible… that would be preferred.”
The man paused, as if he were reconsidering the entire meeting.
He stared off, out the window for a few seconds, deciding whether or not to continue. He seemed neither holly nor jolly today.
“The thing is, I need to remove Mrs. Claus from the company’s health insurance,” he spat out, eyes glued to the floor. “We will not be married come the new year and I know she is on my plan, so if there is a subtle way to make that clerical move, that would certainly be for the best.” Santa’s bashful eyes rose to meet the human resources director across the desk from him.
“I think we could make that happen, no problem,” confirmed the man in the shirt and tie. “And I wouldn’t worry about anyone noticing that little change. Those files are supposed to be highly inaccessible to everyone, outside of a few people.”
“Great,” Santa said, both unconvinced and unconvincingly. “I just know that the end of the year is usually chaotic for paperwork and all. And I want to turn the page, come January.”
Santa continued, “As usual, I will be out of office and unreachable for all of January, so this must be executed before then. Mrs. Claus will clear her stuff out of our house while I am gone, and my lawyers have suggested staying remote and unavailable to anyone. Sorta let it all blow over.”
“I can handle that for you, probably get it processed in the next 48 hours.”
Both men sat in silence.
“And it’s not what you think. Those TMZ headlines about Santa Claus kissing anonymous mommies aren’t true. Frankly, being single petrifies me. The looks I’ll get. The judgments. Everyone will think I did something. Or that she did something. That one of both of us is on The Naughty List.”
“Isn’t that some rich irony? The guy whose job it is to judge others binarily is now looking for amnesty,” Santa joked and laughed dishearteningly, his belly still shaking like a bowl full of jelly.
Another silence overcame the room, so the HR manager stood, walked around the desk, pulled up another chair next to Santa, and put his arm around the big guy. This was not part of the job, but it just seemed like the thing that he needed to do.
Santa took the nonverbal cue that he could continue, if he wanted. “This time of the year, the world is so obsessed with whether people believe in me, and now I need to believe in myself.”
Both men blinked hard and looked to different sides of the room. The HR manager moved back to his side of the desk, and straightened his already straight tie, realized it was straight and thought about how obvious it was that he was not comfortable.
“So I guess if you want to grab a couple forms to bring home for you and the missus to sign, I can process them when you return them. Normally we’d ask for them to be notarized but I think we can make an exception this time. Our secret, Santa.”
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