"Beth, I'm in the middle of a budget review!" "You have to see this." Cassie shook her head and bent back over the spreadsheets on her desk. "We need to increase the transportation budget," she told her boss's face on her computer screen. She was video-conferencing with the head of the Aquila Foundation between her office in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and his winter condo in Boca Raton. "Fuel costs have gone up again." "We'll need to reduce something else," he countered, his head bent over his own set of papers. He stopped writing and looked up with a frown. "Is that the television?" "Beth, please," Cassie hissed, then went still. "What is that?" "That," Beth said in a voice of doom, pointing the remote at the television, "is the rest of your life." "Sir, may we please resume this later?" Her boss must have seen something in her face because he didn't argue. "We can trim from the advertising and media relations budgets and find additional no-cost avenues for those. Then I think that will do it.
