This is my first attempt at a writing a story. Any feedback is welcome. All characters engaging in sexual relationships or activities are aged 18 years or older. Any names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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"So..."
We looked at each other across the desk. Tony was a jowly man, bright eyes and a penchant for very expensive jumpers. Sitting next to him was Dennis. A slight mousey man with a grey moustache from back when it was fashionable.
I waited for them to get to the point.
"So, I hear that you've also been talking to SoftwareWrites?" Tony asked.
I was totally unprepared for that. SoftwareWrites were their main competitors. Bigger, better run and with a better reputation. And while I'd heard of them I hadn't been talking to them at all about a job.
"What did you think of Duncan?"
All jovial. Forced. Tony didn't like Duncan.
Fucking Joe. The headhunter was telling them lies about who I was talking to. But it had obviously hit home with Tony.
"Well, I couldn't really say."
"Oh, come now Phil - you can tell us."
More forced smiles.
"He was nice enough I suppose."
"Hah!" bellowed Tony. "Well, I can tell you that we have far more to offer than SoftwareWrites. Great opportunities, Phil. Great opportunities!"
This was my fourth interview. I had never had four interviews for the same role before but then I was green when it came to interviewing for a job. I'd been at my previous job for seven years and while it was good at the beginning, the cost cutting kept coming and the final straw was when they took away my company mobile phone. I started looking for jobs and at the time wasn't particularly choosy.
My first mistake.
But that's why I was here in this overly luxurious boardroom with two old guys who had built up their company from nothing. Plenty to admire you'd think but they'd got lucky. They began reselling the right product at the right time and made a huge amount of money. One lived in Henley-on-Thames and the other lived in Beaconsfield. Quite why they were still working I have no idea but here we were.
Fourth interview.
"So why don't you take a look at the fantastic opportunity that we'd like to give you Phil."
With that he passed across a contract offer.
As it turns out this wasn't an interview, it was an attempt to close the deal before I took an offer from Duncan at SoftwareWrites. Fucking Joe.
"I'd like a few minutes to read this if that's alright?"
"Of course, Phil - no problem. Would you like some tea?"
"I..."
"Of course you would. Sam!"
A few seconds later Sam opened the door. And I suddenly wanted this job a lot more.
"Yes, Tony?"
"Get our friend here a cup of tea will you?"
"Yes Tony - how do you take it?"
Many, many answers came to mind at that moment but thankfully I managed to respond ("white without thanks") and Sam left.
"We'll leave you for a few minutes then. Grab Sam when you're ready."
"Yes, I'll do that. Thanks Tony," I replied.
And with that, Little and Large got up and left me to review the offer. But my mind wasn't on the offer. It was firmly focused on Sam. She came back a couple of minutes later with a mug on a tray and a small plate of biscuits. She was wearing a navy blue business suit that highlighted her trim figure. She was petite. Maybe five foot two with curves to match, a warm smile and shoulder length loosely curled dark hair.
Her face was more pretty than classically beautiful. Her eyes were slightly too close together and her nose a little too large. But her smile was stunning and her bright brown eyes had a spark and life that was intoxicating.
"I hope this is alright," she said, breaking the silence. Damn it, I'd been caught.
"I'm sure it will be perfect," I responded, trying to keep my cool and smiling at her.
She smiled back and turned and swished her way out of the office. What an amazing arse! Dear gods but what wouldn't I give to see her naked?
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I started work at DT Software two weeks later.
My wife wasn't that impressed but then she wasn't that impressed about most things.
We'd got married for all the wrong reasons. I thought that she'd be a great mother and she thought...? I have no idea. It seemed a very dim and distant world in which we'd first got married even though it was only four years ago. We had a nice enough house in a so-so area of a small town in Surrey. She was a primary school teacher and all her energies went into that. Apart from the nagging that is.
Nothing in her world was done the right way unless it was done her way. And woe betide if you decided to take the initiative yourself and do something.
"I wouldn't have done it like that."
"You want to g out again?"
"Oh I'll close the curtains will I?"
"Exactly what time will you be home?"
In hindsight I should have ended things some time back but I am a bit of a doormat and I kept on thinking that once I was out of the old shitty job my mood would change and things would improve.
And sex was maybe twice a year. And not worth the wait. I'm pretty sure that something bad had happened to her in her teens sexually. I had no idea what it was though as she point blank refused to talk about sex. And I'd given up asking for it. It was pointless as it was never the right time. She was always tired. "Why can't you think more about me and my needs?" And in that very British way I just sort of accepted my fate and got on with life.
What an idiot!
Well hindsight is twenty-twenty.
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I knew that I'd made a mistake taking the offer about two weeks in to the job.
My role was presales. If you're not familiar with the term, my job was to be the product expert and to support the sales person in making the deal. Sounds simple enough but a good presales person can make all the difference in the sales process.
While I had the experience I didn't know the industry so it was a steep learning curve.
The role was also much more technical than anything that I'd done before. Not so much the software but the hardware. And we were just entering the start of the voice over IP world and telephony as a whole was changing rapidly. More to learn.
But I wasn't worried about learning new skills - that's the great part of the job. No, the problem was the sales team and the software that we were trying to sell. The sales team consisted of Warren, Julia and Steve.
Warren was the classic sales guy. He'd bounced around a bit, talked his way into a few jobs, stayed there long enough to not sell anything and then moved on, usually to a competitor. It just shows how many bad sales people there are as people like Warren kept on getting jobs. He was an order taker not a salesman and his only interest was in spinning things out for as long as possible with the minimum of effort.
Julia was different. She really wanted to work at it but was hampered by two things.
The software that we were selling and the reputation of DT Software. Sadly this was before the days of Glassdoor and while the internet was around it didn't have anything useful to tell me about DT Software's reputation. She was pleasant enough but just as I arrived she'd already checked out and was looking for other jobs.
Steve was the survivor. He'd been there for five years, had left for two years and then come back for another five years. The man was a human cockroach. A misogynist git who insisted on giving everyone nicknames. He decided to call me Hugh after Hugh Grant. Mainly on account of the hair. I loathed him.
Steve would have been a good double-glazing salesman. Turn up at someone's house, be pleasant enough and don't leave until they've signed something. That way no one would ever have to meet him more than once and believe me when I say you didn't want to meet him more than once. But he was persistent to a fault. He also did whatever Tony told him to do. And Tony, being a bully, kept him around as his dog to kick.
"You're stealing my money" was the plaintive wail from Steve whenever he'd sold anything and Tony moved the commission goalposts yet again.
So yes, I'd fucked up. But after two weeks I thought that maybe I was overreacting to a new, much smaller company environment. And instead of interviewing like crazy and getting the hell out I ended up stuck there for two years. Two unpleasant, borderline miserable years.
But there was always Sam.
Sam had been hired to be the office manager. She did everything from ordering stationery to making the tea to sending out customer documents. She was efficient, friendly and put up with Steve and the rest of us. We chatted pretty frequently but weren't exactly best buddies. She was saving up for a wedding and bored the shit out of anyone that would listen about the details even though it was eighteen months away.
About a year into my sentence there, Sam was promoted. She was moved to the accounts / HR / personal secretary role that had been recently vacated by an unusual man called Neil. He was boss-eyed and only had one arm. He was actually the first person that I met when I arrived for my first interview.
"You're not supposed to be in here!" he'd shouted when I went through the wrong door by mistake. How right he'd been.
He had left to go and look after his very sick mother in Wales - presumably to be as far away from Tony as he could reasonably get.
Sam actually had a lot of responsibility and it was a month or so later in the pub one Friday lunchtime that she confided in me the secret of the company's success.
"Tony was bragging to me about how he'd set the company up - nothing I hadn't heard twenty times already but he likes to talk so I get to listen. You know how he is... Then he said that when he'd first started the company he'd hired an amazing contract lawyer to write the most cast iron software licence agreement that you ever saw. Cost him an absolute fortune. But because we're only selling to smaller companies most of the time we're dealing with middle managers and no lawyers. So they sign our contract and that's that.
Then in a year's time we raise the price of support by 20% as it states that we're allowed to in the contract. Then the next year we do it again. And it's a five-year contract. By the time the contract is over customer's aren't even using the software but they're still paying for it. They've been living off the proceeds for years."
I was stunned.
"But don't they get sued?" I asked.
"Of course they do! They get sued all the time. And they've never lost. Not once.
That's how good the contract is. I have to spend half my time on the phone explaining to our customers that they agreed to the price rises and there's nothing that they can do about it."
"Wow. They must get pretty upset."
"You think? Honestly it's wearing me down but I need the money from this shitty job until my fiancée can get his business off the ground. Anyway, that's enough about my problems."
And she stopped and took a long drink of her wine.
"Another?" I asked.
