by BWWM Club
Mike smiled inwardly. At the very least she was pretty to look at. He did not know how competent she was, but if he had to end up firing her he could at least reflect on her beauty. It would make the fact that he had hired her somewhat worthwhile.
“My coffee?” he said.
“Mr. Gamble, I’m so sorry,” said Kizzy. She looked genuinely distressed. “I asked the previous assistants that I knew of and they all said that you wanted your employees to be here at a quarter to eight on the dot. I thought I was here on time. Had I been misinformed? Do you want me to get here earlier?”
“No,” said Mike. “I was here earlier than usual. I will inform you if I plan to be early next time and I will expect you to be here fifteen minutes before me and have my coffee ready. Anyway, now that you are here can you please get to work?”
“Yes sir,” said Kizzy. “I will bring your coffee to you in five minutes and I will make sure that all of your appointments today are in order.”
“Good,” said Mike, enjoying watching her squirm. Later on he would realize how wrong it was for him to make people feel so uncomfortable intentionally, but for the moment he was just enjoying the effect he was having on her. Mike loved feeling powerful, both in bed and outside of it.
“Make sure that you cancel my two pm appointment,” said Mike. “I don’t want to meet Carlos until he has sent a response to my proposition. If he wants me to buy him out, he is going to have to relinquish the upper hand sooner or later.”
“Yes sir,” said Kizzy. “Would you be referring to Carlos Montoya, the CEO of Telemax?”
“Yes,” said Mike, “and now no more questions. You are to have all of this information already, I am not here to tell you each and every thing that you need to do. Have my coffee ready, and have my appointments organized.”
“Yes sir,” said Kizzy, getting to work immediately.
Mike went back into his office. He was so addicted to caffeine that he knew he was not going to be able to work until he had his morning cup. He sat down at his desk and eyed the whiskey. It would have the same effect, oddly enough. He had suffered a bout of alcoholism before, and it had not ended well but it had shown him just how active he could be if he was drunk all the time. He shook his head and looked away, turning around and looking out of the enormous window that was just behind his desk.
He needed a solution to all of his problems and fast. He felt like he was descending ever deeper into a pit of despair, and if he was not quick about it he might not be able to get out of it if it ever happened.
Little did he know, his life was about to change completely in the next few weeks, although for better or for worse would be decided later.
Chapter 4
Kizzy frantically made the coffee for her boss. She had really not been expecting him to be there. She had checked the time often on her way to work and had made sure that she was there at a quarter to eight. In fact, when she had checked the watch after setting her purse down on her desk it had been a minute before that time, and she had been glad that she had managed to get to work so early.
And then, all of a sudden, Michael had exited his own private office, throwing her completely off guard. She brewed the coffee for him as fast as she could without ruining it completely, and hoping that she would be able to meet his high standards.
Once the coffee was done, she knocked on the door and waited for him to respond. When there was no response she decided to enter anyway, thinking that her boss would realize that she had only done so in order to give him the very thing that he had asked her to make for him. This was not the case, however. Michael was well and truly pissed.
“Do you know what knocking is?” he said, looking up as if she had interrupted him in the middle of something important. She knew that he had not been doing anything at all. Rather, he had been sitting there and staring at the wall.
“I did knock,” said Kizzy calmly. “You didn’t answer so I thought I would just come in and give you your coffee.”
“I didn’t hear you,” said Michael, “you must not have knocked loudly enough. Next time, wait for my response before coming in here. I might have been doing something important.”
Kizzy was extremely annoyed by this behavior but she chose not to say anything. It would not do to pick a fight with her boss on her very first day at work.
She placed the coffee on his table and exited to do the rest of the work that he had set out for her. Looking through his schedule for the day, she saw that he did not have any appointments for two in the afternoon. Thinking that perhaps there had been some kind of mistake, she rang Michael’s intercom in order to ask him what she should do. When he didn’t respond, she looked through the schedule and saw that Michael’s meeting with Carlos Montoya was scheduled for four in the afternoon. Her predecessor had made this list, and Kizzy really hoped that she had not messed up because it would end up causing a lot of problems for her.
She decided not to do anything with the schedule, instead emailing it to her boss with a side note that stated that it already had the changes that he had requested. He did not respond to this email either.
The rest of her work was unclear to her. Michael had not given her any other tasks, and he had not told her about what else he needed to do with his day. Hence, Kizzy took the decision to be proactive and find work for herself.
A lot of the appointments that had been scheduled for the day seemed to be meetings with new clients. Kizzy felt like the best thing for her to do right now would be to contact all of these clients and remind them of the meeting with Mr. Gamble. Since it was barely past eight in the morning, calling these clients would have ended up being a fruitless endeavor. Kizzy instead emailed them, creating a little schedule of her own which she would refer to if any of the clients did not respond to the emails. The first meeting was at eleven. Kizzy decided that she would call this particular client by half past nine if he did not respond by then.
Once this was done, she got to work going through Michael’s own emails. As his personal assistant, she had been given access to his account which she would be using to make sure that he did not have to waste time with anything that was not immediately important. There were certain things that she could respond to herself, so she decided to do so.
Her work day progressed without much ado, and she started to get into the rhythm of things. At ten, she finally heard Michael’s voice and he seemed quite upset.
“Kizzy,” he said over the intercom, “come into my office, I need to talk to you.”
Kizzy got up and entered her boss’s office immediately. “Yes, sir?” she said.
“I thought I told you to reschedule my meeting with Carlos Montoya,” said Michael. “Why did I just get a text from him saying that he looks forward to meeting me at two?”
“I looked at the schedule your last assistant prepared and didn’t see anything scheduled for that time,” said Kizzy. “You have a meeting that ends at half past twelve, and then nothing on the agenda until four which was when your meeting with Mr. Montoya was scheduled for. I thought that perhaps you had forgotten the actual time of your meeting with him. I tried to contact you to ask you about what I should do but you didn’t respond.”
“Look,” said Michael, “I am not going to hold your hand through everything, alright? If you want to work for me you are going to have to put some effort into it. You can’t just expect me to answer every little question you have. When I told you that I wanted something done, I expected it to be done. Now I have to very awkwardly tell Carlos that I can’t meet him at two. If you call him now, he is going to feel like I am disrespecting him by not meeting him when he specifically asked me on the day of the meeting. This is not how you are supposed to work.”
“I am sorry about the mix up,” said Kizzy, “But again, I was just working with the schedule that my predecessor had provided. I thought that was how things were going to go today. How was I supposed to know that she had made a mistake?”
“You could have called he
r or something,” said Michael impatiently. “Anyway, I don’t have time for all of this nonsense, I have to tell Carlos about the rescheduling myself otherwise he’ll be pissed. Do I need to tell you what else you need to do?”
“Well, yes,” said Kizzy. “You haven’t given me any jobs. If you could just tell me all of the things you need done, I will note them down and make sure that you don’t have to repeat them. However, I am obviously going to need you to tell me what I am supposed to do in the first place, I can’t just think of things to do on my own like this.”
“Is that how you are going to talk to your boss?” said Michael. “Because if that is the case then I don’t see any point in you continuing to work for me. I expect all of my employees to speak to me with the utmost respect.”
Kizzy gritted her teeth. If she hadn’t absolutely needed this job in order to afford her father’s medical care, she would have torn this man a new asshole for treating her this way. However, she knew that there was no option here. She was just going to have to try her best to find a middle ground with this man.
“I am really sorry, Mr. Gamble,” said Kizzy. “I did not mean to disrespect you in any way. Can you please tell me what you would like me to do for you today? I will make sure that you do not have to repeat anything you say.”
Michael scowled and said, “Have you responded to my emails?”
“Yes sir,” said Kizzy. “I have responded to all of the basic emails and I have left the ones that need your attention in your inbox. If there are any emails in there that you expected me to reply to, I will make a note of how you responded to them and make sure that I respond to all of them on my own from now on.”
“Very well,” said Michael. “How many emails do I have in my inbox at the moment?”
“You have six emails that need your attention,” said Kizzy. “There is one from a Chinese client named Li Huang which I think that you should respond to as soon as possible. It has been in your inbox since yesterday, I think my predecessor forgot to tell you about it.”
“Li Huang?” said Michael, his voice starting to get a tinge of anger once again. “I can’t believe that woman. She didn’t tell me about such an important email. Is it a long one?”
“No,” said Kizzy. “It was short, I believe that it’s in relation to a number of emails that Mr. Huang has sent you previously. He is awaiting a response. I did not want to reply because this is my first day and I do not know how things are going to work with all of these clients.”
“Okay,” said Michael. “Try to confirm the meetings with the rest of the clients. Also, check your email inbox. I am sending you a number of agendas which you need to forward to the concerned departments as well as take printed copies of them to the department heads within the next hour.”
“Yes sir,” said Kizzy. She exited the office and sat at her desk, taking in a deep breath. She needed to calm herself down a little. This was a lot of chaos all at once. Normally she would have been able to deal with this without too much effort, but with the bombshell that her mother had dropped on her that morning she was feeling very frayed indeed. This was not how she had wanted to start her very first day at this job.
She did everything she was told, confirmed meetings with clients, and before lunchtime even called her boss’s favorite restaurant to order lunch for him. She knew that he was the sort of person that followed a strict diet and had taken down details of what he liked to eat on what days from her predecessor. By the time lunch came in, she knocked on Michael’s door feeling very good about herself indeed.
However, all of the confidence that she had felt evaporated when she entered the office. Michael flew into a rage.
“Why did you send the agenda to the audit department?’ said Michael. “They are going through a transition period, the current department head was not privy to the information contained within the agenda. You are messing up a lot today, and it’s only your first day.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but you didn’t tell me about this,” said Kizzy, keeping her cool. “I was not informed of the fact that the audit department was not supposed to receive their agenda. You told me to forward the agendas to the respective departments and drop off a physical printout to each of the department heads. I did what I was supposed to do, you should have told me that some of the agendas you sent were not meant to go out or you should have refrained from sending them to me in the first place. You can’t blame me for this.”
“Excuse me?” said Michael, looking up and giving her a venomous look. “Are you telling me what I can and can’t do in my own company? Look, before you do something you ask me about it. If there is a problem, clear it with me before you mess up again. Seriously, you are making it impossible for me to run my damn company. You are the one that’s supposed to be making my job easier to do, and yet for some reason you are doing nothing but the opposite. I don’t think I am going to be able to last very long if you remain my personal assistant.”
Kizzy had had just about enough. She shut the door behind her and looked at Michael, her hands on her hips.
“First of all,” said Kizzy, “Whenever I do try to communicate with you, you don’t respond. And then you have the audacity to claim that I am the one that doesn’t contact you when a problem arises. Secondly, you gave me a job to do and I do it. If there are conditions to the job, you are the one that is supposed to inform me of them. I am not going to ask you if any of the agendas are not supposed to go out when you literally tell me that my job is to send them to their respective departments. There is a serious communication issue here, and frankly speaking it’s all on you. I am only trying to make your job easier to do. I am trying my best to do everything you ask me to. I came in on time and when you gave me no jobs to do I tried to take the initiative and do things for myself. When something happened because of a mistake my predecessor made, you blamed me for it even though I was just doing my job. If you think that you can treat your employees like this, I don’t think I am going to be able to last very long here either. It’s one thing to be a tough boss, but to be an unreasonable one is something that I cannot, and will not, deal with.”
Kizzy realized after she had said everything that she wanted to say that she had probably blown it. This was Michael Gamble the Third that she was speaking to, the CEO of his father’s company, the man that had ruled Gamble Tech for six whole years with an iron fist. She was not going to get out of this with her job intact. In fact, she would consider herself lucky if she managed to get through this day with her head intact now that she had said all of these things.
But then, much to Kizzy’s surprise, Michael started to deflate. He had looked indignant at first, even angry, but then all of the aggression melted away and Michael seemed to slump.
“I’m sorry,” he said. Kizzy felt like she had just heard Hitler say that Nazism had been a mistake. She looked at Michael, utterly dumbfounded, until he looked up at her, not a trace of hardness in his expression, and gestured at the chair in front of his desk.
“Please sit down,” said Michael. Kizzy approached cautiously and sat on the plush, leather chair.
“I am truly sorry,” Michael continued. “You are absolutely right. The manner in which I have been treating you has been absolutely appalling and it is utterly inexcusable, and I do not blame you for wanting to leave my employ as a result. If you want to quit, I won’t stop you. I will write you a letter of recommendation in which I will state that your tenure here was short because of my own mistakes and not because you are not a competent worker. I will call all of my CEO friends and put in a good word for you, making sure that you will get a job at the very next place you apply to. But I would ask you to please consider staying my employee. I will not always be like this. Things have just been… tough for me. Not professionally but personally. Things are happening that I don’t know how to deal with. This frustrates me and I end up taking this out on the people around me. I am aware of the fact that this is utterly unprofessional, of course. I am aware of the f
act that nothing excuses treating an employee in such a manner. Once again, I am truly sorry for how I have behaved with you.”
Kizzy was utterly taken aback. This was Michael Gamble. He was the man that had famously come in to work the day after his father had had a heart attack. When asked why he had come in he had simply replied, “The show must go on.” She honestly did not know how to respond to him being so candid… so real.
“I’m sorry too,” she said after a long silence. “I did not intend to speak to you in this manner I just… I was just feeling a little frustrated myself. There are things going on in my personal life that are leaving me feeling just as hostile as you are. I had wanted to come in today and do a good job, but because of all of these things that are happening in my life I was not able to get the running start that I had been hoping to achieve.”
“Oh,” said Michael, “What sort of things? Is there anything that I can help with?”
“No,” said Kizzy. “It’s very sweet of you to ask, but I don’t think there is anything that you can do. My father is sick and he needs an expensive surgery. You have started paying me a handsome salary and I can use this to save up and pay for some of it. I can cover the rest with a loan, hopefully, and I can pay that off pretty easily too thanks to all of the help that you have given me with the high salary. No, I think I can handle this on my own, but I do hope that you will forgive me for speaking to you in such a disrespectful manner. You are my boss, and I should treat you with respect.”
“Think nothing of it, I was the one that was rude first. I am glad that you put me in my place and told me that I could not disrespect you just because you work for me,” said Michael . “I hope your father gets better soon. If you ever want to take time off to go and see him, just tell me a week in advance so that I can arrange someone to replace you and then take all of the time you’ll need. I will pay you your salary as per usual, and I will make sure that no one from HR gives you any crap for it. You are under my protection now, as long as you give me good work I will make sure that you get anything and everything that you could ever want from me.”