She's the Boss (Romantic Comedy)

by Lisa Lim

  At this point, my head was spinning. I felt like I was suffering from mild vertigo. Carter steamrolled on, “Let me ask you this; can you look good without necessarily making someone else look bad? Can you play the game without playing politics? And when I say politics, I mean dirty politics.”

  “I think I can do that,” I said faintly.

  “Good. Once you know the rules of the game, then you have nothing to worry about. ”

  “Right,” I said in a voice that revealed my doubts, “I have nothing to worry about.”

  Carter looked at me thoughtfully, presumably weighing up the pros and cons of hiring me for this job, I thought with sudden despondency. “Look,” he explained kindly but firmly, “things may have been different with the last director, but under my watch, you don’t have to play dirty politics in order to get ahead. If that were the case, Deepak would be sitting here right now.” He paused to let that sink in. “Not you.”

  I stared at him for several beats. “OK,” I said at last, taking his word at face value.

  He leaned back against his chair and regarded me evenly. “May I offer you some advice?”

  I bit back a smile. “Isn’t that what you’ve already been doing?”

  He chose to ignore my jab. “You get along by getting along. See your peers as your allies, not as your competition. The smarter you make the people who work for you look, the smarter you are going to look as a manager.”

  “You get along by getting along?” I quelled a giggle with difficulty. “You’re not exactly the ideal person to be dispensing that sort of advice.”

  “I know,” he said, smiling warmly at me for the first time. “I’m working on that, aren’t I?”

  True. His gray eyes had lost their deep-freeze look and he was a lot more approachable. At that, I began to think about forgiving him. Only began, mind you. In any case, I thought I’d at least try to get along with Carter Lockwood. Granted, he wasn’t the easiest person to get along with, but I resolved to make a concerted effort.

  “And,” Carter added, “if you can hitch your wagon to a few of the brightest stars, you’ll likely climb right up the corporate ladder with them.”

  As Carter sat there sipping his coffee, I found myself staring at the ring of condensation his cup had left on the table. Then a thought bubble appeared above my head. I decided, there and then, that I was going to hitch my wagon to Carter’s star, so to speak.

  “So …” I took a quick gulp of coffee. “I know I got the job, but I need to hear you say it.”

  “Karsynn,” he said slowly, “you got the job.”

  “Thank you,” I said with as much firmness as I could muster. “I will never disappoint you on how hard I work.”

  “That’s nice to hear. Now,” he said decisively, his tone turning serious and business-like, “I think it’s time we got back to discussing your job title.”

  “Ah yes! Project Manager!” I said aloud, enjoying the lilting sound of it rolling off my tongue.

  “Naturally you’ll be working five days a week. And I’m sure you’re fully aware that your job duties will include planning, executing and wrapping up projects that may be outside the scope of regular company business.”

  I nodded. “I am.”

  “You’ll need to constantly be on your toes and think outside the box.”

  “How can I think outside the box when I work inside a cube?”

  Pointedly ignoring my comment, he asked, “And I take it time away from home and overseas travel is OK with you?”

  “It is.”

  “Excellent.” There was a hesitant pause until he added, “Because we’re sending you to Malaysia for two months to spearhead our new call center.”

  “Malaysia!” I exclaimed in surprise. “Isn’t that the Land of the Orangutans?”

  “Well, aside from the orangutans, it’s a popular destination for establishing global enterprise call centers. Intel, Bose Corp and Agilent Tech have set up shop in Penang. Labor is cheap and a large percentage of the population speaks English.”

  “Penang?” I looked at him, genuinely perplexed. “I thought you said Malaysia.”

  Carter sighed with patient resignation. “Penang is an island off the northwestern coast of peninsular Malaysia.”

  “Oh,” I murmured airily. I guess I should brush up on my geography … expand it beyond places in Greenland.

  Carter cut into my thoughts. “Are you OK with that?”

  Was I OK with that? Hell yeah! Working on a tropical island sounded like a relaxing vacation in the Maldives.

  “Of course!” I smiled radiantly. “When do I leave?”

  “Not for two weeks. And,” he hedged, “there’s one more thing.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll be coming with you.”

  My smile instantly evaporated.

  Oh snap! This was going to be like vacationing in Abu Ghraib.

  “For the time being you’re to continue your duties as supervisor. It’ll give you time to train Rick so he can take over your responsibilities once you’re gone. And you’ll have time to tie up any loose ends and get your agents used to the transition.”

  “Two weeks?” I inhaled sharply. “It’s a little short notice, but I should be able to handle it.”

  “Good!” he exclaimed. “And by the way, you do realize, don’t you, that this Project Manager position is only a temporary one? Once the project is wrapped up, you’ll resume your position as supervisor of your team. Comprende?”

  “Comprende.”

  The news of my epic win on the tennis court had spread like wildfire through the office. Hillary, the only remaining non-office-gossiper, seemed to be the only one out of the loop.

  Her gaze went from me to Deepak. “So which one of you obliterated Jewel on the tennis court?

  “Ah …” I smiled modestly. “That would be me.”

  Shortly afterward, a small crowd had gathered around me and people began assaulting me with a barrage of questions:

  What happened? Did you get the job? Did you take the job?

  Amidst the cacophony, I crossed my arms and stared at them until they all shut up. Then I busted out the robot dance in the middle of the floor. “Aww yeah! Domo arigato, Mister Robato, you’re looking at the new Project Manager! And I’m leaving for Malaysia in two weeks!”

  “TWO WEEKS?” Truong was practically shouting. “ARE YOU CRAZY? YOU CAN’T LEAVE IN TWO WEEKS!”

  “WHY NOO-TTT?” I asked, speaking in a robot voice.

  “We have a bachelorette party to host.”

  “Oh shit!” I clapped my mouth. “We’ll have to move the date up.”

  “We’ll have to do a lot more than that.” Truong cast me a look of utter disdain. “Tsch-tsch. We promised Maddy a party she’d never forget.”

  I couldn’t think for shock. All I could say was, “CRAP!” and then “HOLY CRAP!” and finally, “HOLY CRAPPITY CRAP!”

  Truong raised his eyebrows in silent reprimand. “Did you forget the six Ps?”

  “Of course not.” And to prove it, I dutifully chanted, “Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance.”

  “You got it!” He thumped me on the back affectionately. “So what say we start planning?”

  Chapter Eleven

  “How’s it going?”

  “Oh hi, Hillary. Everything is just fine! Everything is just hunky-dory!” I exclaimed in a voice that clearly indicated it was not.

  “What seems to be the problem?”

  “Pffft. Not enough time.” I sighed. I was busier than a bricklayer in Baghdad. “Something always comes up. Every time I try to get some work done, an agent bounces into my cubicle with another question or demand.” I sighed a second time. “I’ve got so much to do before I leave … performance reviews to write up, monitors to listen to, meetings to attend, a bachelorette party to plan and this constant flow of interruptions from people. Arrgh!” I banged my desk suddenly. “At the end of the day, I’m actually further behind than when the day be
gan.”

  “What do you have to do now?”

  “Train Rick Astley so he’ll know what to do when I’m gone.”

  “Train him?” Hillary didn’t try to hide a smirk. “What for? Rick is just shy of useless. Trust me. Training Rick would be like polishing a turd.”

  “He’s not that bad,” I said, coming to Rick’s defense. “He just needs time.”

  “You’ve got Rick and I’ve got Geronimo,” Hillary grumbled. “It’s like Dumb and Dumber up in here.”

  “Who’s Geronimo?”

  “He’s a newbie on my team. Brains of a chicken, I tell you! I swear sometimes, it takes me five hours to show him something I could do myself in five minutes.”

  “Then why don’t you do it?”

  Hillary drew a blank. “Do what?”

  “Take five hours to save five minutes.”

  “Oh! What a waste of my time,” she declared with a huff of annoyance. “I’d rather do it myself.”

  “Hillary,” I chastised, “haven’t you heard of the mathematics of delegation? Five hours now could save you hundreds of hours in the future. If you just spent a little time to teach Geronimo how to do his job now, you’re freeing up your time so you can focus on other things later.”

  With uncanny timing, Carter popped his head over my cubicle partition. “Well put, Karsynn. It’s too bad that so many people in management fail to appreciate this simple arithmetic.”

  Hillary turned bright tomato red.

  “Anyway,” Carter continued, “I came here to remind you that we have a meeting in five minutes.”

  “On my way there, boss.” Hillary gave a silent salute and marched off.

  “Another meeting?” I held back a groan, locked my computer and started for the conference room.

  The lights dimmed and I sank further back into my seat, blinking up at the diagram in front of me, seeing everything yet taking in nothing. This PowerPoint presentation was one huge data dump. Pardon my French, but it was also one colossal cluster fuck. The charts and graphs had no structure, no significance. I ducked abruptly, half expecting to get shot in the head by one of those flying bullet points.

  Give me liberty or give me death! By PowerPoint.

  Carter pushed up his sleeves and loosened his tie. “This next slide might be a little hard to read.”

  That was probably the understatement of the year. I squinted up at the two point Palatino font that was barely legible. Stifling a yawn, I let my eyelids drift shut and slipped into a zone … into the PowerPoint Zone.

  Seconds later, I came out of my trance, wondering why it was so dang cold in this conference room. I shivered, crossing my arms, making myself into a fortress against the cold air blasting from the vents. I let out another big yawn, thinking this pretty much summed up my definition of hell for years … sitting in a freezing ass conference room and forced to watch PowerPoint slides for all eternity.

  Yawning again, I found myself counting the ceiling tiles. It was the only thing I could do to keep myself awake. There were three hundred and fifty two ceiling tiles. At some point, I must have dozed off because I almost broke my nose on the conference table. I sat up blearily, blinking back the focus into my eyes.

  When everything finally snapped into focus, I found Carter staring hard at me. “Were you having a nice nap, Karsynn?”

  I grinned, genuinely trying to look innocent but genuinely unable to pull it off. “Me? What? No!” I fibbed. “My eyes were closed because I was meditating on the key points of your presentation and, um … I was envisioning a new paradigm.”

  Carter threw me one of his wintery expressions, raising the temperature two degrees or so and resumed his PowerPoint presentation.

  After that near fatal incident, I sat bolt upright in my seat and tried my best to stay alert.

  No easy feat.

  Sheesh. This PowerPoint presentation was as boring as rice cake. You’d think this was the Geneva convention or something, without the hate-spewing Ahmadinejad.

  Ah! A blue pie chart. Lovely. How I longed for a blueberry cheesecake pie.

  Ohhhh! More flying text whizzing by followed by colorful graphs hijacked by unicorns shooting rainbows out of every orifice.

  At this point, I came close to slitting my wrists.

  Mmmm. Another fancy slide. This one looked like the Shroud of Turin. I glanced furtively around the room, wondering if anyone else saw the face of Jesus on that slide. For a while, I sat in reverent silence, absorbing this sacredly divine, celestial and monumental moment.

  Then more pressing matters clouded my mind when I realized I’d forgotten to record Homeland. I sucked in my breath and muttered a shaken curse, “Damn it!”

  Carter’s eyes fixed darkly on me and I threw him a syrupy smile before gazing back at the illuminating face of Jesus.

  “Excuse me, Karsynn,” said Carter, cutting into my PowerPoint prayer. “Since you appear to be so absorbed with this slide, why don’t you take over this presentation?”

  “Is that really necessary?” I laughed nervously. “You seem to be doing a great job. Superb job. Really.”

  “No, no, I insist.” He gave me a short, tight smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Would it be presumptuous of me to say that you haven’t the slightest clue what this whole presentation is about?”

  “Of course I know what it’s about,” I said, racking my brain for a suitable answer. Vaguely, I’d recalled Carter talking about CIP and decided to take a wild stab at it. “Um, you were talking about CIP, also known as continual improvement process.” Carter remained silent and so I let myself rattle on. “It’s an ongoing effort to improve products, services, or processes. These efforts can seek incremental improvement over time or breakthrough improvement all at once. Erm, processes are constantly evaluated and improved in the light of their efficiency, effectiveness and flexibility. And CIP is the trajectory in which our organization is taking.”

  Clearly, I was talking out of my ass, but I thought it all sounded pretty good.

  Carter stood perfectly still and gave me a look that indicated he knew I was talking out of my ass. Well, it didn’t take a genius to come to that conclusion.

  “Actually,” he said at last, “I was talking about how we can improve sales across the board.”

  “Sales!” I exclaimed with great aplomb. “Of course!” I smiled reassuringly, unsure of exactly who I was reassuring. Myself, most likely.

  Carter looked at me with deep interest. “Your team seems to be doing very well in sales. Care to share your secret?”

  “Sure,” I said in a voice that didn’t quite sound as though it came from me. “I think I can do that.” I shifted in my seat and looked around the room. “Right. Now, how many of you here often feel like selling is an intrusion? Raise your hands.”

  Several hands shot up. “Good. Good.” I nodded enthusiastically. “You see, I hate to impose on others too and that feeling that you have—that selling is intrusive—it’s a good thing. It’s an asset. Those that do well in sales on my team, well, they all seem to have a sixth sense about this. They can immediately tell by the tone in a caller’s voice when the timing is all wrong and they won’t antagonize the caller by attempting to pitch a sale. I believe that effective selling is not only directly tied to timing, patience and persistence, but also to the sensitivity of a situation. A sensitivity to the person on the other end of the line.”

  “But,” said Hillary, looking at me in a rather puzzled way, “how do your agents end up closing so many sales every month?”

  “I have my agents schedule a time that is more convenient for a call back.”

  “A call back?” Hillary echoed.

  “Yep,” I replied, “a call back. I don’t think the old foot-in-the door school of high pressure and super aggressive sales techniques work anymore. I just don’t. And I’m not so sure they were ever effective to begin with. Maybe it was necessary forty, fifty years ago when a salesperson was not likely to see or speak to a customer for m
onths. But today, if you are being intrusive and have enough awareness to sense this, then there is no excuse for not picking a better time to call back.”

  Carter nodded thoughtfully at me. I could almost see this notion taking root in his brain. “You do, of course, have to be willing to call back.”

  “Of course. I give my agents time off the phones every week for call backs.”

  “So that’s it?” said Hillary, nonplussed. “That’s your secret?”

  “Uh-huh,” I said with an air of nonchalance.

  Carter had one hand over his mouth and the other loosely on his waist. “The simplest ideas are often the best,” he said reflectively. “And I like that approach. From the calls I’ve been listening to, some agents just don’t get it. They may sense that the caller is in a hurry or in an irritable mood, yet they’ll deliver their sales pitch anyway.”

  “Or,” I helpfully pointed out, “a caller will even ask the agent to call back some other time, yet the agent will still say, ‘Oh, this will only take a minute.’ ”

  “In case you’re forgetting,” Hillary cut in, “that’s what the agents are supposed to do. If they don’t pitch a sale there and then, they’ll get marked down by Quality Assurance.”

  “I’m aware of that,” I said blithely.

  The cogs were turning and Hillary was thinking. Slowly, ever so slowly, the penny dropped. “Ohhhh. That’s why your team’s quality scores are so dang low.”

  I sat forward and countered, “But their sales are off the charts. Which brings me to this.” I cast a swift glance at Carter and directed my last comment at him. “Why don’t you make a change? Bring this up the chain of command?”

  Our eyes locked across the room. There was no love lost in Carter’s eyes, but he looked at me with a new hint of respect. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said noncommittally.

  Sure you will. I smiled at him with a certain degree of cynicism.

  All I had ever gotten from my superiors were empty promises. And I expected no different from Carter Lockwood.