Page 57 of Flirting with 40

He already has.

On me.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Blakely

“Let’s start with you, Blakely, since it seems you couldn’t be bothered to make it here on time this morning.” Heather’s smile is anything but warm as she tries to pass off her comment as benign.

“Gladly.” I sit up straighter in my chair, refusing to take the bait. “What would you like to start with?”

Heather takes a sip of her coffee as the rest of the ladies sitting at the circular table pull out their pens to take notes.

“And what’s the point of this?” Minka asks. Clearly, she isn’t a morning person and is probably pissed that she was here on time when I wasn’t.

“Our goal is to better understand how to be constructive with criticism in order to keep the team moving forward.” She glances down at her pad of paper. “I’m going to give you a scenario, Blakely, and then you explain to the group how you’d handle telling your coworker that the idea doesn’t fit with the direction the company is taking on a campaign.”

“Okay.” But I don’t trust her as far as I can throw her.

“Let’s all look at the first slide, shall we?”

I glance to the screen, and my brow slightly pinches with confusion. Even though my name is blacked out, I know it’s my proposal and graphics from a campaign I spearheaded a few years back.

“As you can see here, we have a well put together proposal, but it completely misses the mark. The person has no vision. She clearly doesn’t understand the demographic or how to target them. This proposal would be dead on arrival once it hit my inbox, and I’d wonder if the employee who handed in something like this rubbish was qualified to work here.”

When Heather completes her spiel, she turns her attention from the slide and levels it directly at me.

I have a very short time to figure out if I want to challenge her, and if so, how exactly I go about doing so without pissing her off and rallying her minions to her defense.

She’s such a bitch, and the smarmy smirk on her face and her shady example emphasizes it.

“Blakely?” she prompts.

Heather vs. Blakely: Round One.

I take a deep breath and speak. “As her boss, I’d sit with her and ask for more specifics. Why she chose to market this demographic. What factors she considered while making her plan. What her secondary goal was with this proposal.”

“Secondary goal?” Heather asks.

“Yes. Obviously, the main priority is to produce sales, but what else is Glam trying to achieve? Brand awareness? Repeat customer purchases? A new customer introduction into our line of products? There always has to be a secondary goal to a campaign. So, that’s what I’d ask my employee because every idea deserves to be heard regardless of what you think on the onset. You never know what other ideas it might spark.”

Heather continues to stare at me while my coworkers nod. I wait until she goes to speak, and I continue, purposely cutting her off.

“The question is, how did this campaign do?”

“How would I know?” she scoffs.

“Well, there is a date on this campaign, so we know it was run. If you click on the second tab of that spreadsheet right there, it will tell you just how well it did.”

“That isn’t needed,” Heather says and switches the screen.

“If you’re going to criticize my work in front of my coworkers, then at least show the whole picture.”

There’s a sharp intake from my right by Cliché Karen as others shift uncomfortably in their seats.

“Criticism is how we learn,” Heather says, a sharp rebuke in her tone.

“If that were the case then you’d be fair and look at the whole picture. You’d click on that second tab and show that despite your comments about the campaign, our launch was successful. The new line we were pushing had one of the best releases to date on top of a forty percent spike in overall sales. That spike sustained for four months, which is longer on average than others. So, while the campaign may seem dated to you, it was actually quite successful.”