Worst Week Ever (A Long Road to Love)

by Liza O'Connor

  He shrugged. “She’s okay. Not as good as the last one though.”

  Unwrapping her fork from a swaddling of fine linen, Carrie dug into the egg-white omelet. Her eyes rolled in ecstasy. “God, this is fabulous!”

  “Really?” He moved closer and stole her fork so he could try some.

  She expected him to smile at first taste. Instead, he became annoyed. “Come on! Your taste buds can’t be that jaded.”

  His eyes narrowed. “It’s very good. Far better than the crap she feeds me.”

  Carrie shook her head and swiped the fork. If the cook prepared Trent mediocre meals, she understood why. During her first six months at Lancaster Chairs, Trent had threatened her with unemployment on a daily basis and she’d hated it. She nearly grew to hate him, would have, except his remarks always lacked sincerity, as if he’d learned them rote.

  Once she’d consumed a quarter of the omelet, she offered him the fork. He smiled and shook his head. “You finish it. The cook will serve me my gruel later. Probably spit in it for good measure.”

  “Probably. You did just threaten to fire her.” She held the fork out to him. “Let’s share the rest.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, he took the utensil from her. “Are you saying I shouldn’t fire people who don’t do a good job?”

  Carrie shook her head and smiled. “You don’t fire people. You just threaten their jobs on a daily basis. It only makes the good ones find new jobs and the bad ones spend their time thinking of petty revenges.”

  “Nonsense. You’re the best I have, and you’ve never left.”

  “True, but during the first six months, I considered it frequently.”

  His eyes rounded and filled with pain as he set down the fork. “How frequently?”

  Carrie hated hurting his feelings, but Trent needed to hear the truth. “Every time you threatened to fire me if I didn’t make your due date.”

  “But those deadlines were important.”

  “I know. Which is why I always tried my hardest to meet them. Threats of dismissal didn’t make me work harder; it only made me want to quit.”

  His gaze wandered to the Dali painting and she suspected he’d stopped listening, but she kept talking, on the off chance he might actually hear her. Hope springs eternal.

  “When you stopped threatening me with unemployment, I finally could enjoy my job.”

  He refocused on her. “I stopped because I knew you’d get your work done. Are you saying I should just assume people will do their jobs? In my experience, that’s not a good assumption to make. Most people are natural born slackers.” His face softened. “You’re a rarity.”

  Given Trent’s current employees’ work ethics, Carrie could understand why he’d think the world held nothing but slackers. She’d never seen such a negative, unhelpful group as her fellow workers. His claim they’d become worse during her absence stunned her. She couldn’t imagine how they could be less cooperative, but during her time in Taiwan, they must’ve sunk to new lows if Trent felt compelled to seek her out the moment she stepped off the plane.

  “You’ve had a hard month, I gather?”

  He rubbed his face with his hands. “You’ve no idea.”

  Setting the food aside, she patted him on his back.

  “Maybe it’s time for us to do some strategic firing. Hire new employees with good attitudes, who hold no long-term resentments toward you. I’ll even do the preliminary interviews and weed out all natural born slackers, if you want.”

  “Yes, I want!” He smiled as if she’d taken a great weight off his shoulders.

  “But in return, you must promise you won’t threaten to fire them every time you have a tough deadline. You’ll need to treat the new employees as you do me. Then they’ll not only stay on, but they’ll work their hardest.”

  Trent’s willingness to make major changes to his father’s business pleased her. He hadn’t changed the topic or left the room—his usual response to conversations he didn’t enjoy. Surely, this had to be a sign of progress. “Then, if I have to leave on a trip, you’ll have plenty of competent, hardworking people to support you.”

  “Excellent!” He popped up and paced the room with barely contained enthusiasm. “I’ll fire the entire staff today and start over.”

  “No!” She jumped up and stopped his pacing by standing in his way.

  He pulled up and frowned. “Why not?”

  “Because many of those people actually know how to do their job and we need their knowledge retained in the company. You’ve just pissed them off so they work on perpetual slow mode. Let’s start by removing the dedicated, hardcore slackers.”

  His frowned disappeared and a grin took its place. “Let’s do it now.”

  She loved that her boss finally wished to address their staff issues, but she wished he wouldn’t go from zero to hundred so quickly. “Trent, we have to follow procedures. You can’t just fire people without warning.”

  He threw his hands up, clearly exasperated at her desire to go slow. “I’ve warned them a thousand times.”

  “Yes, but you say it so indiscriminately no one believes you. We’ll call in a Human Resource professional and follow his or her advice on how to do this so you don’t get sued.”

  He’d opened his mouth, ready to object, but when he heard the word ‘sued’ he closed it. Upon sitting on the bed, he sighed. “We’ll do it your way.”

  She sat down beside him. “Thank you.” She reached over and gripped his hand, appreciating his willing to listen today.

  He placed his hand over hers. “How’d Taiwan go?”

  “They insisted their budget couldn’t be cut and I didn’t understand their business.” She rolled her eyes.

  “Why didn’t you call me? I would have straightened them out.”

  She chuckled softly. “I used the threat of calling you and they finally listened to my presentation on Just in Time manufacturing.”

  “See? My bad reputation helped. You would’ve failed without it.”

  God, she didn’t want him taking that away as the lesson learned. “Your prior interactions are why I couldn’t get anyone to work with me. They don’t trust you, and since I’m your Executive Assistant, they didn’t trust me either.”

  He stared at the Dali painting again. Not a good sign. Since he’d never released her hand, she tried tightening her grip. He refocused on her with an intensity that rather unnerved her.

  Regaining her composure, she extracted her hand and continued. “I had to prove myself a hundred times over before they would even listen to me. In the end, they couldn’t ignore the potential improvement to their margins and agreed use the Just In Time strategy. They agreed to this change in spite of you not because of you.”

  She rose from the bed, swatted at the wrinkles in her jacket. Couldn’t he have at least taken off my jacket before putting me to bed?

  He petted the sleeve of her jacket, evidently finding the wrinkles annoying as well. “Where are you going?”

  He probably feared she intended to go to work like this. “Home.”

  “How will you get there?”

  She laughed softly. Did he think just because he couldn’t manage without his driver, she couldn’t get home on her own? “I’ll call a taxi.”

  He tilted his head to one side, his mouth forming a decided pout. “Do you even know where you are?”

  Nodding to the the painting on the wall, she answered with a grin, “Since the insurance company only covers the Dali if it resides at your Long Island estate, I had better be there.”

  Trent chuckled at her response. “I love the way your brain works.” His focus then returned to his efforts to pet her jacket’s wrinkles away. “I’ll have my driver take you home. It would cost you a fortune to go by taxi, and I know how you hate to waste money.”

  “I would appreciate the ride.” She looked around the room. “Where’s my luggage?”

  “I had Mars call about that. It seems to have wandered off. The airport prom
ises to deliver it to your house when they find it.”

  Carrie sighed and headed out the door with him following.

  “On the way, you can explain why we want Just in Time inventory.”

  “You’re planning to come with me on my drive home? You do realize the ride is two hours in good traffic?”

  He shrugged.

  “Each way.”

  His frown suggested he hadn’t understood the true duration of his plan, but to her shock, he shrugged again. “We have a lot to catch up on.”

  * * * *

  An hour into the drive, Carrie had convinced Trent the change to JIT manufacturing coupled with a strategic vendor partnership would increase their margins, decrease inventory levels, and actually reduce component shortages. Then they moved onto his nightmare month.

  Leaning back and staring up through the skylight, Trent sighed. “I just wanted a list of our major customers by volume purchased. Neither sales nor systems could provide it.” He paused and glared at her. “I even ransacked your desk, hoping you might have the information.”

  Carrie grimaced. Before her trip, she’d tried to tell him where things were, but he kept insisting he knew. “You should’ve called me. I do have it. It’s on my shelf in a book called Customer Stats.” She paused and then addressed something that had bothered her all week. “Why didn’t you call me?”

  He glared at her. “I tried. Your damn phone claimed to be out of service.”

  She nodded. “I discovered that when I arrived. But I called you right away and gave you the number of the phone I purchased there.”

  “You didn’t call me,” he snapped. “You never once called me. Gone a whole month and not one call.”

  His accusation outraged her. “I did too! But Liza, said you weren’t accepting calls and I should email you, which I did five or six times a day. But evidently you weren’t reading emails either.”

  He leaned forward and secured her hand, pulling her from her seat facing him to the middle section next to him. “I wish Liza hadn’t walked out on me, because I really want to fire her, maybe strangle her.”

  Carrie turned sideways in the seat and studied his expression, which hinted of guilt. “Then you didn’t tell the temp you wouldn’t take my calls?”

  “What does it matter? Your phone wouldn’t work anyway.” His fingers rapped on his leg. “So who gave you the sales information?”

  She decided to drop the phone issue and focus on matters that still required fixing, like getting rid of the jerk in charge of systems. “When I first came to work for you, I asked Bob Ott, the systems manager, but he said the system couldn’t retrieve it. I insisted it could and thus began our current hate-hate relationship.”

  Trent snorted and met her gaze. “I’ve got the same relationship going with the guy. So how’d you get the data?”

  She smiled. Maybe he’d agree to fire the jerk. “The next time Bob didn’t come into work—which is often, by the way—I bribed the only systems guy who does comes to work with a treat to give me the latest system level password. Then I logged on, constructed a temp report, and pulled the data myself. Each week I buy the new password, which is why we have two years of sales data.

  Trent remained quiet as his left hand fingers tapped against the right. “So to obtain this information you go around my systems guy who told me it didn’t exist, get a password you shouldn’t have, and run the search yourself.”

  She nodded, worried by the anger she heard in his voice when he mentioned the password. “If it makes you feel better, they change passwords every week, which makes it hard for an unauthorized person to get into the system.”

  His fists clenched. “Except the password can be purchased for a cookie.”

  Damn it. His anger went to the wrong guy! She needed to lighten the mood fast. “Not just any old cookie. They have to be my grandmother’s caramel and chocolate turtle recipe. I don’t think Jack would sell it for less.” When Trent didn’t smile, she sighed heavily and tried another tactic. “Please don’t threaten to fire my source. If you do, my sole line of data will disappear along with the reports you receive.”

  Turning sideways in his seat, he faced her. “Let me get this straight. The data exists in the system, but the system geek refuses to provide it until he gets cookies?”

  She shook her head, frustrated Trent had the wrong guy in his bull’s-eye. “Bob has forbidden Jack to run jobs for me, so don’t be mad at him. In fact, if you let Bob know Jack gives me the passwords—”

  “Sells you the password,” he snapped

  Carrie gripped his arm. “Bob will fire him, and we’ll have lost the only person in your overly large systems group who has ever helped me out. If I lose him, you lose your data.”

  Trent huffed and kicked the other seat. “What if I order Bob to give you the password?”

  “He’ll say I have the appropriate password for my position, which, if he did his job and created the needed reports, would be true. And if you insist he give me a password that allows me to restructure system data and create reports, I’m pretty sure he’d trash our system and blame it on me.

  Trent stared up at the skylight again and growled. “This sounds like a good place to start firing people.”

  “Not Jack.”

  “How about we start with the manager who refuses to give me data that clearly exists in the system?”

  She smiled, hoping he really meant to do it. “An excellent place to begin! But remember, you will need to get a new system manager ready to come on board before you fire Bob. Your system is the industry standard, so we should be able to find one pretty easily.”

  “I’d rather fire him now. Do we have anyone in his staff we can promote? And don’t say Jack.”

  “As far as I can tell, most of Bob’s staff are relatives and friends who should probably go with him. Otherwise, when we fire him, he could use their access codes to crash our system in retaliation.”

  Trent’s eyes twitched. Never a good sign.

  Settling her hand on his arm, she said, “Before we mass fire the systems department, let’s hire the human resource expert, and let him or her line up new people.”

  Trent’s brow furrowed, warning her he didn’t like something about her plan.

  “How many people are in systems?”

  “Thirty.”

  “How many do you think we need to fire?”

  “Twenty-nine.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Let me guess. You want to keep your buddy Jack.”

  She shrugged as if the idea of firing Jack didn’t outrage her. “He’s the only one who works. The rest of the staff doesn’t even bother to come in. According to Bob, he’s saving money by letting them work from home.”

  Carrie didn’t want Trent to conclude working from home was the problem. Once they had quality systems people, some of them might be able to work at home. God knows they wouldn’t all fit in the server room where Jack resided.

  “I know systems people can work off-site. However, they should still answer their phone and emails, and do tangible work.” She sighed in frustration. “I once asked Jack what they do, because I’ve never seen anything. He just rolled his eyes and cited the exact words written in each of their job descriptions.”

  A faint smile tugged at Trent’s lips. Why the smile? He should be outraged.

  His smile widened. “When did you last take a vacation?”

  His change of topic took her by surprise and worried her. She hoped he hadn’t lost interest in replacing most of the systems department. When issues became complex, Trent would sometimes opt to leave matters status quo. He continued to smile at her, evidently waiting for a response. What’d he asked her? Oh, her last vacation.

  “I haven’t gotten to that yet.”

  “You’ve been here two years. Surely you’ve taken a day off?”

  When did he think this vacation happened? She’d been attached to his side, working ten hours a day since he hired her! “Not unless you consider today a vacation.�
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  “I don’t, since all we’ve discussed is my god-awful employees.” He slammed back against the seat and glared up at the limo’s sunroof. Finally, he turned and looked at her. “Be honest. Is it me, or do I have the worst employees in the world?”

  As far as she could see, Trent and his employees shared the blame, but in his current heightened state of aggravation, she needed to soften her reply. “They’re a challenge. That’s why we need a professional to help sort it out.”

  “HR. Never saw the point.”

  “Which is probably why you have the worst employees in the world,” she muttered.

  “Ha! I knew I was right!” He smiled at her. “Except for you. You single-handedly pulled this company from bankruptcy.”

  He’d never credited her with saving his business before. Her heart swelled with pride. “We pulled it from bankruptcy.”

  With a heavy sigh, he added, “I tried my hardest to keep things running, but until you came on board, nothing worked.”

  “You wasted too much of your energy yelling at people. Going forward we’ll need a softer style.”

  His forehead wrinkled like a shar-pei. “That sounds counter-productive.”

  His response made her want to scream. Why did he cling to his father’s management style, even when he’d just admitted it didn’t work? Two steps forward, one step back. Taking a deep breath, she tried a new approach. “Did you take any management classes in college that discussed team building?’

  “My father taught me everything I needed to know. He declared team-building bullshit. Every man should be out for himself and let the strongest survive.”

  She’d always suspected Trent’s father had led him down this path of poor management. “Which is why we struggle to get anything done. Running a business is a team effort. We need to start rewarding people for working together, not screwing up everyone else’s performance.”

  Contentment crossed his face. She couldn’t imagine why, given the topic. Discussions of his father and change normally annoyed him. He’d probably stopped listening and moved on to new thought. Normally, she’d give up, but not today. He’d insisted on coming along so he could discuss these matters. By God, he’d stay on topic.