Disgruntled Employee of the Year

So, it was her third year at this black hole of a job. Most people think of their work places as some sort of place they don't want to be. For Steffanie however, she considered a black hole, not because of the long hours that she spent here, the fact that she hadn't had a raise in a long time, and the monotonous work she was required to do. No, these things she could deal with, to an extent, they were a little like Chinese water torture at times, but she was a strong woman. The reason she thought of this place a black hole was because of it's soul sucking properties. Sort of like those dark creepy flying creatures from the Harry Potter movies, this place just seemed to drain all the good and happy qualities out of a person. She had seen it time and again from her perch at the front desk of the company. They would come in bright eyed and expectant, newly graduated from the local university and ready to start their first real job. As a few weeks went by though, slowly the glow would leave their eyes, the smiles would become more forced, and the tension in their shoulders would increase to the point that some of them, without even realizing were slouching more, walking funny, rubbing aching shoulders. These were just the affects upon a person in the first few weeks or months of employment, depending on the willpower and strength a person possessed upon arrival. After a year or so, the cynisism and skeptisism would set in. Not trusting anybody around them, thinking everybody was after them, these of course were either proceeded or preceeded by the rumor mills and the power hungry race for more power in the company. They reminded Steffanie of ravenous creatures that were kept in a hole and only fed once a month. Feeding off of each other misfortunes or each others remains so to speak, if one of them did not "make it" in the climb up the corporate ladder. In any case, they were so entangled and entranced by their greed and their minor accomplishments that they had lost sight of the fact that they were working in an industry that not only did not have any higher oportunites to offer them, but would likely be obsolete in the coming years. Steffanie did not care about all this. She did care that her co-workers had once been friends, and just all around good people with happy lives and fulfilling relationships before they had sold their souls to this place. Since only shells of them remained however, she was hard pressed at this juncture to conjure up a scrap of sympathy for their stupidity. They had thought they had wanted this, and even when it had become something different from what they had hoped for, they had continued along the dark road anyways. They had chosen their path. Steffanie was really the only one among them who was different. She had not come from the same back ground seeking the same thing as the others, she had not been starry-eyed when she had walking in through that front door. She had gotten here through trickery and deceit, she had stolen this job right out from under her own cousin. She had not even wanted this job, but she needed a job and it was available. She secretly laughed at her fellow workers as they struggled against one another for something she didn't even want. She watched as they tried to pay off school bills for the degree they had wasted so much time getting to have the exact same job that she had. They didn't pay a whole lot of attention to Steffanie. She had been here longer than most of them, but had not seemed to move up much in the company in the years she had been here. They did not see her as a threat to them. She did not have a degree, she wasn't clamboring for their positions, she wasn't kissing anybody's ass to get to the top. What they didn't know however, was that she was already exactly where she wanted to be. She was already at the hub of activity. She was not immersed in all of the petty projects and undercurrents of the company, but instead at a vantage point where she could see the big picture. This was perfect, as she was not only an employee of Lush Valley Vineyards, but a smuggler and an assassin as well. When she had first been approached at her job, shortly after she had started working here, she thought the idea of operating a smuggling ring from a winery was probably a good idea, as they ship all over the world, but what could an assassin possibly do hidden away at a little vineyard in California?