"Besides, I'm doing this for team morale. Everyone's working themselves to death around here. You pitch in a little so people can enjoy themselves, and that's a problem?"
By the end of her little speech she'd puckered her lips into a wounded pout, the picture of a selfless do-gooder crushed by my heartless penny-pinching.
A few colleagues who'd never liked me nodded along on cue.
Conrad Dickerson, the guy who never once paid for his own coffee but always had a cup in hand, let out a chuckle.
"Come on, Matilda, don't be so tight-fisted. We're all on the same team here."
A woman at the next desk chimed in right behind him.
"Mercedes is just trying to be nice. You make a little more than the rest of us. Would it really hurt to look out for everyone?"
I almost laughed.
Just like that, Mercedes had talked her way into rebranding my paycheck as the department's communal slush fund.
I'd be the one footing the bill and doing all the work, and somehow Mercedes would get all the credit for being thoughtful.
I was about to speak up when the department manager poked his head out of his office, wearing an expression of fatherly concern that made my skin crawl.