Michael, the man behind this whole enterprise, comes from money, I think… Actually, I only assume. We don’t know very much about him at all. With his silvery-dark hair and spookily pale eyes, he’s a mystery to me in many ways. He never seems to be tired. I regularly receive emails from him in the middle of the night and I’m still yet to see him eat.
Obviously, there are rumours. I don’t involve myself in them. But I know people around the office joke that he’s a vampire. Or a ghoul. Someone once suggested he was a cannibal.
I silence my mind in case he can read it. At that exact moment, he turns his head to smile at me in his eccentric way, full mouthed, stretched cheeks, as if he heard me thinking. I open my mouth to say something, but James beats me to it.
“How wasyourweekend, Michael?”
Slimy git.
“Exactly as you’d expect it to be, James. Kind of you to ask,” he replies. Ever the mystery.
James gives Michael a polite nod before turning to me with a slightly less enthusiastic grin. “What about you, Felicity? Get lots done?”
I laugh in polite corporate. He knows I did. The reason he knows is because we were the only two sad fools to be logged in on Saturday afternoon, replying to Michael’s many emails. “It was sublime, thank you, James. And how was yours? Did you manage to get away from your laptop for a few hours?” I round this off with a pity face.
“Hilarious,” he mutters, his grin faltering. “Yes, thank you, Felicity.”
There’s a moment of strained silence. I physically feel it in my chest but force myself not to fill it with some unhelpful nonsense. No. We need to get to the heart of the matter. I, however, will not be the one to cause the friction in our first meeting on a Monday morning.
James purses his lips before finding his stellar grin again, leaning towards Michael in his typical flirtatious way. “What did you think of my idea then, boss?”
Let’s bloody go…
I say, “If you had gotten to my email before this meeting, James, you would have seen that it isfartoo late to be incorporating changes…”
“As I said a moment ago, Felicity, unfortunately the sales team were very busy this morning, so I was unable to make time for your reply. However, if you had fully read the email thread, you would’ve noticed my idea has already been endorsed by the ops team.”
He means Rajesh. He means he walked up to Rajesh and told him to write a response.
My smile is corporate cyanide as I lace my fingers together on the table. “That’s really great. I’m so glad you took the initiative to get this project signed off by Rajesh. And I did see that part of the thread. Thank you for highlighting it to me again. The trouble is, you have forgotten that you need both Marketing and Finance to sign this off too.”
Michael looks between us, as James blinks at me. I notice the quiver in his cheeks and along his rigid jawline. He knows he’s got to play his best cards to win this because I’m not going to budge.
He talks quickly, clearly. “As Marketing will remember…” I’mMarketingnow – hilarious. I’m not a person, I am an entire department. “… we’ve almost sold out of hospitality places for the final event of the summer. We could easily close out another marquee. The profit would absolutely annihilate anything VIP tickets can achieve. Although I admire and support all the work Marketing have done to bring this about, Marketing should be realistic about the way business works.”
The way business works? What a patronising…
My smile is making my jaw ache, but I must win this battle now. Time for some swift blows. “Of course, Marketing is very aware of how business works. Thank you for your concern in this matter.” I cringe as I say, “It would help, however, if Sales were more aware of the work that goes into the last efforts of organising the events, as it mostly comes down to the dedication of the other departments to achieve this. For example, where would you put the kitchens?” I ask, tilting my head in a patronising way to mirror James’ tone. “What about the menus? Sales have less than three weeks to finalise it. And the sales team aren’t always as reliable as we would like—”
James laughs with volume to interrupt me. “Don’t go for my team,” he says, his pitch raising slightly, his teeth gritted. Ooh, he’s protective of his aggressive slime bags. I’m yet to meet a salesperson in his team who has any kind of office-kitchen etiquette. At work events they’re always the loudest, rudest and most inappropriate. Annoyingly, Michael tends to turn a blind eye.
We, being my lovely marketing crew, are usually trying to have a pleasant evening of laughter and food whilst they’re mashing it up withshots, shots, shotsand glugging beer back like it’s going out of style.
“Sales needs to consider the fact that there’s absolutely no guarantee you can sell the tables in that timeframe,” I reiterate. “And even if you can, what about the sixty people who’ve already paid for the VIP tickets? Marketing sold another twelve last week alone. We’re at seventy per cent capacity. Marketing can easily get this to the one hundred per cent.”
Gosh, even I’m talking about myself as if I’m an entire department now.
“The sales team deserve the chance to exceed their bonuses, and this would allow them that,” James says directly to Michael, not even bothering to include me now. He gets straight to the heart of the matter. Money. That’s all he cares about anyway.
“Erm… excuse me? When making business decisions, please consider all the departments it will affect,” I say. In other words, stop being a selfish prick.
“Thank you for pointing this out, Felicity,” James says. “Unfortunately, when you look at the bigger picture success of the company, you’ll know the bonuses your department achieve are incredibly minimal compared to Sales so—”
I scoff. “Marketingdeservetheir bonuses too.”
He makes a face. “Sorry, I wasn’t aware the middle of my sentence was interrupting the start of yours.”
Ugh. Shots fired. I have no response to this. I glare across at Gloatman. In fairness, I did interrupt, but he’s done it to me too.
