I Still Approve Her Reports

Month-end reports are due by nine and I'm usually the last one still logged in, cross-checking totals nobody else double-checks anymore. I trained Priya on this system three years ago, the categories, the phrasing that gets things approved without a second look. She got the team lead role in March. I told everyone I was fine with it, and mostly I believe that part.

Tonight her report has four line items with my old phrasing exactly, the parking near her apartment filed as client travel, a dinner filed as team building for a team of one. I know the trick because I invented the trick, back when I needed twenty extra dollars more than I needed anyone to trust me completely.

I could flag it. One email, and it stops being my problem what she does with a promotion I wanted.

I click approve instead, the way I have four times this month, and tell myself it's loyalty, or it's not wanting to be the person who ends someone's month like that. Then I sit with the cursor over the next line longer than the math requires, because the truer answer is that being the only one who catches her mistakes is the closest thing I've got left to being better at this job than she is.