“Delivery.”
I turned to smile at Carmen from product testing. She had a whole laundry basket for me full of gift items, and I quickly cleared off the end of my desk so she could set it down.
“The product tester feedback on these is in your inbox.”
“Thanks, Carmen.” I couldn’t wait to read through it and have the items in my hand to compare it with. It was one of the few changes I’d asked for when I got promoted. Digital pictures were great, but holding something in my hands and seeing for myself it was ‘flimsy’ or ‘too small’ made the feedback all the more meaningful.
I was tempted to dig right in, but I really needed to clear the contracts waiting for me, so I didn’t even take a peek. The next contract I pulled up was for a lantern necklace that glowed. It was one of Britta’s better finds, managing to be beautiful, meaningful, and unique. Because our price points were higher than our competitors, we relied on exclusivity a lot. We had to have items no one else offered. Wow-factor was a buzzword that got a little over-used at Connecting Hearts.
“What is this?” I muttered to myself, pulling up the next contract. It was for an office golf putter set. There were a billion like it, and nobody ever used them. We often referred to them as fruitcake gifts. The ones people set aside and hoped the giver never asked about again. There was no way I had approved this for Hunter.
I marked it as denied and stewed for a minute before going to the next contract, but I couldn’t concentrate. I’d have to confront Hunter. He was supposed to get my approval before things ever got to the contract phase. We could sour a relationship with one of our suppliers with things like this, and we couldn’t afford to lose any of them.
Honestly, I would have preferred to just fire Hunter. Resentment seemed to come off him in waves, and it leached into his work. He made me feel young and inadequate. And maybe I was, but that wasn’t his call. My promotion came after proving I could pick the best products and develop long-lasting business relationships with other companies.
Hunter had been chummy with Chandler and shared a similar ego, one that didn’t allow for criticism or self-reflection. But not liking a person wasn’t a good enough reason to fire them, and I actually didn’t know if Icouldfire someone.
I certainly wasn’t involved in hiring. Human resources just sort of magically delivered people to me and expected me to make it work.
After stewing about it for a minute, I finally printed out the voided contract. If I didn’t confront Hunter now, I’d put it off and just let it slide again.
The walk down to his cubicle felt like the walk of doom. But I reminded myself I loved my job, and in order to keep it, I had to prevent things like this from happening.
I stepped into his cubicle and leaned against the wall. “Hey, Hunter. Do you have a minute?”
He turned and gave me a dismissive glance. “Yeah, okay.”
“Great.” I approached his desk and placed the contract in front of him. “I remember this. I remember telling you no to this. How did it get to the contract phase?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I just figured it was worth a second glance. Did you see the deal I worked out with them on the price? The margins are insane. Trust me. I’ve been doing this a long time. Long before you were put in charge. I know what I’m doing.”
I counted to three. And then I kept counting because his smug face was making me want to blow up on him, and I couldn’t do that. “Hunter, haggling with them on price while knowing I was going to veto this is a waste of their time and yours. I told you no. I meant it when I said it.”
He sniffed and stared me down, not looking the least bit sorry.
“Jenny.”
I whirled around to see Keegan, who looked guilty for eavesdropping, even unintentionally. “Sorry to interrupt. The bigwigs are here. They want a meeting in the conference room in five.”
“Which bigwigs?” I asked, watching Hunter bolt from his desk and take the opportunity to escape our conversation. The man wasn’t on time to anything, but suddenly he needed to be five minutes early to a spontaneous meeting.
“All of them.” Keegan gestured in the general direction of the elevators. “Curt Holloway, the H.R. lady with the stilettos, Marcus from marketing, the head sales rep. I don’t know. Just, a whole bunch.”
Great. One of those types of meetings. A rah-rah-rah, good job, let’s-talk-forever kind of meeting. I liked being appreciated as much as anyone else, but it always seemed a little ironic that a company touting one-of-a-kind gifts had no clue what to give their employees.
Their last gift, an oversized World’s Best Employees mug—one for the whole team, not one for each of us—had started out as our candy dish, but had since devolved into being used as a trashcan. If I wasn’t afraid of someone noticing it missing, I would have thrown it away. I didn’t like having to clean it out when someone hadn’t wrapped up their used gum all the way.
“Thanks for letting me know. I guess we better head in there.” I followed Keegan to the conference room where Hunter and a few others on my team were already sitting as far back as possible. At the head of the table, Elena from H.R., Curt Holloway the VP, Marcus, and all the rest were standing together smiling and whispering about something.
“Jenny, get up here.” Curt gave me a toothy grin and gestured for me to come stand with him. This was the part I hated the most. If they were really interested in making me feel important, they could start by scheduling these things with me first. I had dozens of contracts I was supposed to get through before lunch.
“I’ll make this short and sweet,” Curt said as an introduction. He always started that way. It rarely turned out to be true. “We just wanted to call you all in here to tell you how proud we are of this team, and especially the leadership we’ve seen from Jenny Baker thus far. After our sales meeting this morning, I can tell you we’ve had the highest sales of a product in its first week ever, which is projected to give us our biggest month ever. So, let’s hear it for the Squeaky Clean Anne’s Revenge!”
Everyone dutifully clapped, and then Curt continued. “We’d like to thank Jenny for her eagle eyes in finding it, and especially Marcus for his amazing marketing wizardry. Wonderful as always.”
Marcus gave a cheesy bow. More clapping.
I was grateful Sadie didn’t hear that last part. She probably would have jumped across the conference room table to strangle Marcus for taking credit for her work.
