© 2008 Rob Carver Devil in the Details
(This is Chapter 02 of 'Devil in the Details'. This story will not make sense unless you read Chapter 01.)
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Driving back into the office parking lot the girls directed him to Deb's minivan so she could unload the huge amount of food leftover.
Stephen sat in his SUV for another ten minutes before his legs were strong enough to walk inside. He went right into the Men's room and took off the cup and wet suit bottom. He had to sit there on the toilet for another ten minutes before it was safe to walk to his office.
His email beeped and realized it was three o'clock before the cloud cleared. His boss heard from the Andress Corp. account, there were a bunch of superlative words like 'genius', 'magician', and others. He wasn't yet able to focus so he didn't read the whole thing, just knew they were very pleased and apparently he and Olivia had pulled the account back from the precipice.
He didn't want the attention, wished he could do stuff without the recognition … he opened a new account's ledgers and dove into his number crunching. Hours passed while his fingers clicked away.
When Stephen looked up Olivia was in his office, it was dark outside. "Hi," he said, happy to see her beaming smile.
"Congratulations."
"Oh, congratulations to you too … it wouldn't have worked without your help, I'm sure your effort was at least half the answer there, long term it's ninety percent."
"That's kind of you to say."
"Not trying to be kind, it's true … I don't see the things you do, the strategic stuff. They could have gotten all the dimes and nickels accounted for and yet would still be losing money."
"Perhaps … but I have some things to talk to you about. Do you have time?"
"Yes, just a second … okay, I'll pick this up tomorrow."
"Is your email working alright now?"
"Yes, why?"
"I told you the girls were naughty … they have been playing you."
"They have been teasing me like crazy, today was intense personified."
"I've guessed that … but there is more, I know their motivation behind the teasing. Come with me to my office and I'll show you. I arranged to get system master privileges to show you this." She turned and walked the five doors to hers, Stephen following close behind.
Stephen wondered if this was a good time to do this. The earlier teasing had his libido in a heightened state and he was smelling things, her perfume, and the crack in her voice, the way her haired flowed from one side to the other like in those hair commercials on TV. His senses were too keen to all of her beauty. This meeting wasn't about their friendly relationship; he shouldn't be feeling these things. He knew it must be because of what the girls were doing to him at lunch. Yeah, they were driving him crazy.
He stood beside her chair while she brought up the screen.
"Stephen, have you looked at your expense account folders?"
"No, haven't seen them. Deb is handling the paper work for me. The girls are taking me to different restaurants to show me where to take clients … I know it's probably the wrong thing to do, but it's not illegal, and management doesn't seem to mind."
"Okay, let me show you … these were not employee lunches, we have a strict policy of twenty dollars per person when you do that. That's why we usually just order pizza delivery. Have you seen these? The smallest one is a hundred and thirty."
"No, really?" and he bent over to look.
"Yep, all your account names are listed as the clients, up to five guests plus your assistant. Have you ever taken five guests?"
"No, just the two of us, except three today, we did a picnic today."
"Let's look at today, I haven't seen that one … oh, wow, three hundred twenty … ten guests from the Burke account."
"Three hundred dollars for a picnic? There was a lot of food left over, but three hundred? I could have bought a picnic table, the grill, and the food for that much."
"I'm guessing one of them is feeding a party tonight or tomorrow. And what about the gifts?"
"Gifts?"
"Yes, the two Kitchen Aide mixers at three hundred each and the bedding for four hundred."
"There have been no gifts, it must be a mistake."
"Right … so Andress, Burke and Benton didn't receive these?"
"No, I would never do that, we are not a bank; we don't give out toasters for opening accounts. That goes against every thing I know about business."
"Stephen, the girls went shopping with your credit card. Where is it?"
"I don't know, Deb has it I guess. I've actually never seen it."
"They are not supposed to touch your card, ever. And the trip to Jacksonville, the girls had a wedding to go to, I'm guessing the bedding was the wedding gift from both of them … they were bride's maids, I know because I can read their email. Did you see the girls while you were there? Did they work with you on Saturday?"
"No, they disappeared from Friday night to Sunday night."
"The trip was their idea, they wrote emails to management from you explaining that you needed to go there and straighten the mess out. It was those emails from you that said you needed to bring along two administrative assistants. It's why Deb stopped IT from fixing your access to your email, I checked."
"So all this has been a series of scams?"
"You can't say I didn't warn you … but then I never thought they would go this far. With the trip and gifts, not including the meals, this adds to over six thousand dollars in two weeks."
"Wow … so we need to fire them."
"Not so fast, you need to read the emails they have sent to management. The ones you sent and didn't know about. You have been praising their work; you used words like amazing competence, professional attitude, and suffering long hours without compensation to solve these problems. And management has been very responsive. So if you now fire them, our bosses will think you are some kind of nut, a genius but a flake. They'll just use your talent and never promote you. Right now they think you can walk on water. You have saved the company millions, maybe twenty million in revenues they would have lost without your work. And all good managers praise their employees, try to give them credit for their work like these emails do."
"So you're saying I'm trapped?"
"Let's look at our options … we could just fire them and they might have copies of these emails and they might claim you did all this to get rid of them, suing the company and you personally, sexual harassment or some other garbage … or we could take away the credit card and have a stern talking to them, hold this over their heads so they start behaving, fire them if they try anything else. We can monitor their email and keep a close watch on your expense reports. You are going to have to start taking clients out so there won't be a huge swing in your spending. It wouldn't look right to go from eight thousand dollars in the first two weeks to nothing the next … we'll have to taper that off to something reasonable. And that will match your case load; the difficult clients you saved will be going into a maintenance mode."
"That makes sense."
"So tell me what they have been doing to get you to take them to lunch every day."
"I shouldn't tell you … its sexual stuff."
"No, come on, I want to hear. I haven't heard a juicy story since they did it to the other guy. I took him to a bar after the company fired him, he told me everything."
"But I'm feeling embarrassed." Stephen sat in the chair next to her desk. He tried not to look at her legs crossed just a foot away.
"Tell me about the first time, the Oyster Bar … who was that Susan or Deb?"
"Deb, she went in the bathroom and changed, put on a see-through top, cut really low, took off her bra and folded her skirt over a couple times … lots of leg."
"Yeah, she has an amazing body … so that's it, just the show?"
"Her mouth is pretty bad, saying she liked me looking at her tits, sorry. (He looked up to see if Olivia was offended, she wasn't) And Deb flipped up her skirt, in front and once behind."
"Let me guess, she was wearing a thong."
Stephen nodded his head yes. They were making eye contact and he could see she was excited about his stories. Looking at her face kept his mind off her legs.
"So tell me about Susan, the first time with her, the Showboat."
"Her mouth wasn't as bad … but as soon as we sat down she opened her dress down to her waist, showed me and then grabbed my hand and held my hand to her breast. She wasn't wearing a bra."
"She never does … and she did this right there in the restaurant? Did any one see?"
"I'm sure the waiter caught us once or twice, he didn't say anything, and the place was mostly empty."
"So that was it, just feeling her breast?"
"Almost … and then getting in my SUV she asked me to lift up her dress, it was linen, she didn't want to get it wrinkled."
