The Battle in the Office

Clutching the freshly printed meeting minutes, I stood outside the director's office door and took a deep breath. From the end of the corridor came the crisp tap of high heels, sharp and carrying a note of swagger. That was Mary Scott, the company's newly assigned project leader, rumored to have a remarkable background. She wore a well-tailored white skirt suit, holding a cup of steaming hand-poured coffee, and strode straight to Kevin Lewis's desk. "Kevin, I look forward to your guidance on our work from now on." Her voice had an intentionally sweet softness as she gently set the coffee down in front of Kevin Lewis. Without even looking up, Kevin Lewis kept tapping on the keyboard, his tone cold as ice: "Company policy forbids discussing personal matters during work hours. Take your coffee and leave." Mary Scott's smile froze for a moment, a flicker of embarrassment flashing in her eyes, but she forced herself to pull back her hand and maintain her composure. I happened to push the door open to deliver some documents and caught the scene, so I instinctively lowered my head. At the time, I didn't realize this unpleasant first encounter would make me the target of Mary's misplaced anger. The microwave in the pantry dinged. I got up to pick up my reheated lunch, and as I turned around, I was suddenly bumped into head-on. It was Mary Scott, and the lemonade in her hand splashed all over me, soaking most of the monthly report I was holding. "Ah, I'm really sorry," she said, but there wasn't a hint of remorse in her eyes. "How can you be so careless walking?" I stared at the blurred writing on the paper, growing anxious. This was an important file that Kevin Lewis needed to review this afternoon. Yet Mary Scott, in her high heels, left the pantry without so much as a glance back, leaving me to clean up the mess in a sorry state. What was worse happened at the project review meeting. I stayed up late for three nights preparing the PPT in advance, but when it was my turn to present, the projector screen was completely blank. In a panic, I checked my computer and found the file had been maliciously deleted; there wasn't even a trace in the recycle bin. All eyes in the room were on me—some sympathetic, some just watching the drama unfold, and then there was Mary Scott, with a barely perceptible smirk at the corner of her mouth. Kevin Lewis frowned, told me to sit down, and rearranged the presentation order on the spot. After the meeting, he pulled me aside—not to blame me, but just to ask me to redo the report and have it ready for him tomorrow. I thought the matter was settled until the performance review came out at the end of the month, and Mary Scott's team was docked ten points. Later, I only learned from colleagues that it was Kevin Lewis who found the backend records of the file deletion and directly deducted points from their team. Mary Scott clearly pinned the blame on me, and her harassment only grew worse. She would intentionally make me submit a ten-thousand-word report five minutes before clocking out, and sneakily remove pages from the materials I had prepared, causing me to embarrass myself when dealing with clients. And Kevin Lewis, whenever he caught Mary Scott's sly tactics, would respond by docking performance points. They never argued, but a silent power struggle had formed between them. Stuck in the middle, I felt like an innocent scapegoat, living carefully every day.