What the Budget Bought

Summary

At lunch I'd barely finished handing around the beef jerky I'd made when our department manager, Derek Pritchard, followed the smell to my desk.

He grabbed a piece, tasted it, and announced at full volume.

"Dylan, this is good. Way better than anything you'd buy to go with a beer."

Before I could get a modest word out, his tone shifted.

"Perfect timing. The owner isn't coming to the department dinner tomorrow night, so there's no sense throwing money around."

He pulled three hundred-dollar bills out of his wallet and slapped them on my desk.