A virgin young man is trained by his new boss in the art of pleasing women
WORK EXPERIENCE
My name is Steve and this story is about events that happened at my first job upon leaving school at eighteen.
In those days I was eager to please, having landed an entry level position at a fairly large corporation.
Of course all thoughts of quickly becoming an important cog in the corporate wheel were soon dashed when I discovered that most of my duties involved fetching cups of coffee and distributing items from the mail room.
Still, we all have to start somewhere.
Progression usually required some more prominent figure, a line manager or executive to adopt you and mentor you through the process of learning the ropes.
For the first few weeks I was what they called a 'floater'. Not a very glorious title, but it simply reflected that I floated from one department to another depending on need.
It was the Monday of that week that I first met Mrs Gregory.
Mrs Gregory was around fifty, curvy and smart. She may have been shorter than most of the men, including me, at around 5'2", but she held her own with the best of them. Some thought she was quite fearsome, though that might have been said just to wind me up.
"Watch out for her." said one male colleague, "She has been known to send them home in tears."
'Them' being wet behind the ears grunts like me.
For most of that week I doubt I was even a blip on her radar. I just did as asked and kept my nose clean. That was until the Friday afternoon, when I realised I had fucked up big time.
It was a serious mistake. Career ending, I thought. I even considered just chucking in the towel and going home.
But then, throwing away a job wasn't much better than being fired from it, and I also felt bad that my error was going to cost ordinary people a large amount of money. I couldn't just walk away from that.
In the end, at around 3:00pm I took a deep breath and knocked on Mrs Gregory's door.
"Come in." she said abruptly.
I entered and stood waiting for her to acknowledge me. She looked up from her laptop, puzzled that I didn't seem to have a purpose being there.
Mrs Gregory was astute though. Immediately her expression changed as she saw my white face.
"What's wrong?" she asked, removing her glasses and sitting back in her chair as if bracing herself.
I explained what had happened and how sorry I was.
She listened without getting emotional or shouting or any of the other reactions I was expecting. She waited for me to finish.
"Right." she said after a moments pause, "We need to sort this."
"I'm so sorry, Mrs Gregory." I said once more.
"I'm sure you are." she said, without cynicism, "But 'sorry' doesn't easily fix things."
I watched as she put back on her glasses and typed on the keyboard.
"If there's anything...." I began.
"Yes, you can be quiet for a second." she said calmly without looking up from her screen.
I stood and waited.
After about five minutes, though it seemed much longer, she looked at me.
"Right." she said, "If you want to help sort this out, you must listen and do exactly what I say, okay?"
I nodded.
"No winging it, thinking you can do better. Just stay on script and we
may
be able to rectify this, but we're against the clock. Concentrate, okay?"
I confirmed my willingness to put all my efforts at her disposal.
Mrs Gregory outlined our course of action and instructed me on the steps I needed to carry out in order to make it happen.
Once she was sure I understood my role, she sent me on my way, reminding me of the time constraint.
I walked swiftly to the lifts to go down to the mail room where I was to intercept a package that was due to leave within the hour. She had forewarned them that I was on my way.
Just before the bank of elevators Mr Johnson collared me with a task.
I had to brush him off, much to his disdain. "Who are you running around for?" he asked as I waited for the lift.
"Mrs Gregory." I said, and saw him nod and laugh.
"Got you by the balls already, has she?" he said.
If only he knew.
The lift arrived and I stepped in, the doors closing on Johnson's Cheshire cat grin.
The mail room workers hustled me to the pallet that was to contain the package we needed, and we searched through the hundreds of envelopes and parcels.
I kept glancing at the clock and could see workers beginning to load other pallets into waiting vans.
They're early, I thought in a panic.
Eventually my hand alighted on the one we were searching for and I shouted my thanks to the mailroom as I ran back to the elevators.
While I was gone, Mrs Gregory had been using her charm and cajoling skills to smooth troubled waters with other departments and rectify the mistake I had made without actually highlighting the mistake itself.
I returned to her office holding the package discretely under my arm.
Being a Friday there was already a thinning out of staff on our floor as people left for an early weekend, their work all completed and without errors.
For Mrs Gregory and I we still had a shit load to do, but I was still very impressed with how focussed and calm she was in the process. I understood now why she had reached this level in the corporation.
Suffice to say that with a few minutes left until 5:30, we were finally able to sit back and agree that disaster had been averted and my problem had been discretely and quietly expunged from the system.
I still expected her to fire me though, but at least I wouldn't have other people's financial pain on my conscious.
"Well, Steve." she said, regarding me from her chair, "That was exciting, wasn't it?"
"I could do without that sort of excitement, Mrs Gregory." I said, bracing myself for the inevitable.
"Sit down, please." she said, indicating one of the two chairs the other side of her desk.
Here it comes.
"What you did was avoidable and showed you lacked concentration in your work."
I nodded. My face was red, my heart pounding and my future extremely bleak.
"However," she continued, "when you might well have run for the hills, or tried to blame others, you did the right thing and came to me. That took guts."
Now she stood and walked to a filing cabinet located against the office wall.
"Not only that," she said, unlocking and opening one of the drawers, "but when I told you how we were going to put things right, you listened and you acted to the letter of my instruction. I like that. I like that a lot."