AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter One
Guy
“You are, as always, a creature of habit.”
I looked up from the steak and potatoes dinner I had been enjoying in silence and couldn’t help but sigh at the woman standing over my table. Without even bothering to ask or wait for an invitation, she pulled out the chair opposite me and took a seat.
“I knew I’d find you here.”
I kept eating as I watched her. She knew I wasn’t pleased by the interruption, but she was also one of the few people at the firm who wasn’t fazed by my temper or irritation.
“How is that?” she asked, referring to my plate as she set her purse down. “I’ve only ever had their carbonara here, and it was quite underwhelming, to say the least. I came here with Paul, and he complained for two weeks afterward about how overpriced food always tasted so bad.”
I continued eating, and at my silence, she eventually cocked her head and looked at me.
“How mad are you that I interrupted your dinner and reflection time, which everyone knows never to interrupt you on?”
I reached for my glass of wine and took a long drink.
“Remind me again why I can’t fire you?” I asked, and she laughed out loud, her gentle voice ringing out across the room. There was a low constant buzz of others eating and making merry as well, so no one else paid her any mind.
“Because I’m your Human Resources Officer and your former teacher. I do my job wonderfully well, but you also can’t be disrespectful or dismissive of me like others because I was your favorite teacher.”
Sighing once again because she was absolutely right, I picked up the menu and handed it over to her.
“Order the seafood pasta. It’s much better than the carbonara.”
“Alright,” she said excitedly and slipped down her glasses. A few minutes later, the waiter was waved over, and she excitedly placed her order.
“This dinner is on you, right? You pay me well, but surely not enough to pay for this sort of place. I mean, I can, but what a waste. No plate of pasta should cost anything more than thirty dollars.”
This immensely amused me, and upon seeing this, she realized it as well and gave me a soft look.
“Alright, let’s talk about it,” she said, leaning back on the chair. “Four secretaries in two months? That's problematic, and people are beginning to ask questions.”
"You're making it seem like I raped them," I replied. "All I did was fire them for being so monumentally incompetent."
"Yes, right, so you say, yet they all deny the mistake you claim they made."
"So, you're saying I'm lying?"
"I'm saying you truly preferred Mr. Connerty, and now that he's retired and moved back to Poland, you're not even trying to give anyone else a chance to replace him. I know he's been your secretary and a paralegal for you for the last eight years, but you need to find someone else that you actually like, or at least learn to like one. You're the biggest talent in the firm, and you need someone to manage your affairs for you; otherwise, the losses can cripple the entire company."
"Thank you for repeating all the things that I wasn’t aware of," I said, and she smiled.
“The girl today,” she said. “The one you fired. She said that she proofread the contract several times before sending it two days ago. As to why there was an extra zero missing, she has no idea how that could be possible, especially since you checked the document as well.”
"So, I'm at fault?" I asked, and she sighed. "Or maybe the document itself omitted the zero all by itself?"
"I'm just saying that I know these mistakes are monumental, but rather than fire the staff, why don't you scold them or something and give them another chance?"
"And you were told I hadn’t given them other chances?" I asked. "If I didn't want to give her a chance, she would have been fired from the first day," I said. "She didn’t tell you about the services bill she sent to the wrong client? We had to reduce Alchai Motor’s charge when they saw how much of a discount we gave to Maxwell House."
"Yikes, you still remember that? It must have monumentally pissed you off."
"I'm guessing she didn’t mention this when she came crying to you, did she? Tell me, how much incompetence should I bear before I kick them out? Should I wait till they make an error that costs the company millions? Just so that I can earn the reputation of being magnanimous and friendly?"
At this, she went quiet, and a waiter came over with her food. After smiling up at him and saying thank you, she picked up her cutlery and dove in. We both ate silently, and it was comfortable. Things were always comfortable between us, and I had always trusted her judgment of character; after all, it had been that astute judgment of character that had seen the potential in me and pushed for me not to be ignored and written off as a grad who was going absolutely nowhere apart from jail for all my blowups and the troubles I had caused in school. So far, as the firm had grown, she had also been able to recruit the best talent, but so far, all the secretaries sent over to replace the now-empty seat in front of my office had been a catastrophe.
