Chapter 6.
Raymond appeared through the door of the canteen, he maintained a low profile as he sauntered to a table near to the food counter and watched the antics with the pride of a well-run ship.
Raymond just sat quietly on a spare chair at a table occupied by members of his sales staff. His company was a good place to work, the workers all knew him well and he was well respected because of and not despite his well-known homosexuality.
He carried himself well as a man and even the homophobic workers could not help liking him in the way that some racists make exceptions.
He knew that even Jane was enjoying the banter and none of it caused any offense, his staff knew that he loved a joke but had no tolerance of bullying. He had negotiated that fine line between being a kill joy and political correctness, if I am still allowed to use such and outdated term.
Geraldine arrived with nothing less the than the entrance of an Extinction Level Event. "What is all this noise, how am I supposed to concentrate of the cash flow forecasts with this... What are all these pictures around the walls? who the..?, what has she..?, They're disgusting, who's put these up? You it's you." She bellowed with the finesse of a hippopotamus moments before it kills another curious tourist and pointed at Jane.
Raymond buried his head in his hands and shook his head. He fucking hated, no I mean really, really fucking hated his sister. They had jointly inherited the business from their dad and as second generation business owners the only thing that had held it all together was Raymond. He decided to remain quiet and take strategic advantage of his sister's fucking lack of personality.
"Come here you, what's your name, not that it matters, Human Resources will have you escorted off the premises in the next 10 minutes." She bellowed in front of a silent audience who despised the bitch, not quite as much as Raymond did, but if witch burning was still legal in Britain, she would have a life expectancy which could be measured in the time it takes to build a bonfire.
Raymond had seen enough, he had briefly formed a plan, the details he would work out with Joanne and Jane, but he needed them both off site for a while. "Geraldine," he called out, from the quiet spot he had been occupying, "Shut the fuck up you fucking fuck wit."
Geraldine, stood motionless, despite her poor man management in the past, this was a public display of bullying beyond anything that had gone before.
"Right, Geraldine, Joanne, Jane, my office now and no one's been fired," he said in a firm, commanding voice which was loud, but not shouted. With that he left the canteen and was briskly followed by Jane and Joanne who had their heads down in utter terror and embarrassment.
The three of them sat in Raymond's office waiting for Geraldine, who made a point of defying her brother and boss, when she arrived 15 minutes after everyone else she breezed in with a mug of coffee and scoffed at Jane and Joanne.
Before Geraldine could launch into a self-righteous defense of her outrageous behavior and vilify Jane, Raymond stated flatly, "I'm going to suspend Jane and Joanne on full pay for 2 weeks, while this situation is investigated, any essential testing will have to be conducted by management."
Geraldine smirked as though she had managed to get her way by bullying again, "well Raymond I'm glad that the directors of the company have shown unity."
Raymond returned the smirk, "I will get Yvonne to escort Jane and Joanne off site, but I'm going to ask you to refrain from leaving the accounts department ever again, unless I give you permission," he finished without a hint of emotion, the way people who hate each other do.
Geraldine turned on her heel and stormed out, knowing that her temper had cost her, she resented Raymond's more senior position in the business, but he wasn't a liar and he meant what he said.
With that, Raymond rose and shut the office door, he picked the phone up and was dialing when Yvonne knocked on the door and peered in, "are you telepathic?" He asked looking at the phone.
"I just waited till she'd gone" she said quietly, resisting the urge to look round to see if Geraldine was listening at the door.
"Right I need a meeting," Raymond said then pressing the intercom button spoke to his secretary, "get me Darren in here and a pot of coffee as soon as possible and I want you to contact John at the micro motor manufactures and have them available for a tel-conference in 30 minutes."
"Don't worry girls, I like you both a lot, which is more than I can say for my sister, your future here is as solid as a cock. Geraldine is going to get some comeuppance for her outburst this time and you're going to help me."
Darren was sat in the office bewildered by what he was being asked to do, "No, 5 inches, 125mm girth is the maximum we still have tooling for and 330mm is the longest that can accommodate any kind of vibration into it."
The phone rang, it was the teleconference call, "Hi Raymond, we'll be able to supply the 32 watt digital motors in the numbers you require, in two weeks if that fits in with your testing schedule."
"Hi John, how's the fishing been this week?"
John sounded a bit deflated, "I didn't get to go, wife told me to clear the garage out."
"Sorry to hear that John," John always launched straight into business when he had been harangued into domestic chores and missed out on his fishing, Raymond knew him from old and whenever they spoke John would start by talking of his weekends fishing if he had managed to do any.
"There's been some upset here that's set back the testing," explained Raymond.
"What's Geraldine done now?" Whenever Raymond led with the subject of upset, Geraldine was always at the root.
"Same shit, different day, the reason I wanted to speak was to ask if the digital micro motors come in larger sizes."
"They sure do, how big were you thinking of?" asked a now interested John. He knew Raymond's tone, he was up to something.
"I'm going to ask you to discuss that with Darren, basically they're to go into the 125mm girth 330mm long vibrating dildo." Said Raymond with an angry edge, "don't worry about power supply we can have an external transformer for this, I'll just need to know the power rating in total."
When Jane and Joanne emerged from the meeting, they had witnessed a man plot revenge for years of utterly wanton shit behavior, because she had been given a directorship and had never had to work for it.
Jane and Joanne were asked to leave the premises and promised that they would be reinstated as soon as Geraldine had been brought down a peg.
Chapter 7.
With both the product testers suspended from duty, day to day life at the company was subdued, it appeared that Geraldine had won. Raymond was busily working behind the scenes however, he had got a leading high street chain of adult shops who had done business with them periodically, but had difficulty resolving small accounts errors as Geraldine had insisted on calling them, to return a favor.
Their purchasing manager had suddenly shown interest in a new huge dildo which she had seen a prototype of and wanted to order. It was a really good order too if they could make the deadline.
Raymond was telling Geraldine about the amount of money it could generate if they could get it tested in time and push it into production. But it wasn't going to happen, they had no one to test it.