SEAN
I took a personal day on Thursday to deal with my father. He was in a nursing home, and he didn’t love it. Most of the time, he was able to stomach the routine and all the nurses and other inmates, but occasionally he rebelled. They called me Wednesday night to say that Dad was refusing to take his medicine.
“What’s going on?” I asked, sitting down beside him the next morning.
“What’s going on with you?” he asked stubbornly.
I filled him in on some of the details of work, acting like it was a social call. “The nurses say you’re not taking your medicine,” I got around to the point after the prerequisite small talk.
“They’re trying to poison me,” Dad said.
“No one’s trying to poison you,” I responded. “Here, let me see.”
I got up and walked over to the end table where they’d left the pills and a small glass of water. Picking one up, I examined it. Pretending to be an expert on all things medicinal, I brought the assortment of items over to where my dad sat.
“This one’s just a vitamin,” I said, pushing a small capsule toward him.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
He took that pill, swallowing it obediently with a sip of water.
“This one will make you look good for the ladies.” I held up another.
“Give me that.” He snatched it from me, downing it eagerly.
I went through the entire cadre, giving him explanations for all five pills. When I was done, I told the nurse what had happened.
“If he thinks you’re giving him sex pills, just go with it,” I said.
She frowned. “We don’t like to lie to our guests.”
“Trust me,” I said with a wink. “It’ll make things a whole lot easier.”
Dad had a couple complaints that I helped him sort out. He didn’t like the socks they were giving him; he said they were too thick.
“I’ll buy you some new socks,” I promised.
By the time I got him straightened up, it was midday. I decided not to go back into the office. There were dozens of other things I could do with a free afternoon. I picked up some lunch and took some shirts to the dry cleaners. I went to the grocery store to stock up on a few things. When the errands were done, I got a workout in. I didn’t get back into the office until Friday morning, and when I did, I could tell something had gone wrong.
Damien and Kent weren’t talking to each other. There were two new interns. One of them was a woman who’d started on Monday, but one of them was a woman I hadn’t seen before. I arrived early in the morning and found them all hard at work.
The receptionist didn’t arrive until nine, and any meetings with customers would take place after that. I had a few hours to get my bearings before the market opened, so I walked around to say good morning.
It was Management 101 that you should always keep tabs on the people working for you. Bringing in donuts occasionally and stopping by the water cooler were good ways of discovering new and important information. Sometimes people shied away from writing informative emails, but they would open up if you were standing in their office. Since our firm was so small, there weren’t a lot of secrets, but I could see the tension that was simmering just below the surface.
My first stop was Kent’s office. It was right across the hall from mine. I knocked on the door and poked my head in.
“Morning,” I said.
“Morning,” he replied. He didn’t even look up from his screen, which was odd. I wouldn’t call Kent friendly, but he usually had a few words to spare, especially for me.
I closed the door and walked down the hall. Swinging into the intern’s lounge as we called it, I found the new hires. “Morning, Sam, how was your first week?” Another key leadership strategy was knowing everyone’s name. Studies proved that if you called an employee by name, especially at the beginning, they would be more likely to give you 110 percent.
“Fine, sir,” Sam said. She was a curvy blonde who was beautiful and competent.
My gaze settled on the other young woman, sitting across the way from her co-worker. Her screen was open to the employee manual, and she was busy studying it. She was a bombshell, there was no disputing it. With soft chestnut hair and a cute little nose, she was just the type of person I would be drawn to in a bar.