Maddie chewed the top end of her pen as she waited in the conference room. The *Physical Inventory* binder sat askew across her lap unopened for the last ten minutes or so. It was heavy, useless and heavy. *Why the hell wasn’t this automated?* she bemoaned to herself.
Her sullen thoughts of the entire uselessness of their outdated inventory system came to halt when she felt the plastic bit of pen suddenly split between her teeth.
She scoffed, scrunched up her nose, and tossed the pen aside.
She chose the largest conference room, even though there were only supposed to be three of them. She just preferred to have the space. The large table in the center took up most of the floor, but the chairs were comfortable and equipped with casters, and there were multiple power outlets. So, if they decided they were going to build this thing out on some proper spreadsheets, this would be the place to do it.
Maddie and her project-mates were supposed to meet up and conduct the inventory together. Aaron said he was on his way nearly twenty minutes ago, when she first sent out the text message, and to her utter disappointment Caleb hadn’t responded at all.