“I can always get another job. I’m good at what I do,” I stated, still standing on my previous decision.
“And when will that be?” Justin asked. He was looking at me in the way he usually does whenever he thought I was doing something reckless. “You might want to deny it, but most companies wouldn’t hire a twenty-three-year-old as a creative director; you’d have to start as a creative assistant even though your expertise has been proven.”
“Look, I can always work my way up the ladder. Don’t make it sound like IM is the only option I have,” I snapped, getting quite offended.
“Oh really?” Justin chuckled. His face filled with a seriousness that didn’t match his laughter. “Any creative director you work under will not appreciate you pitching in ideas; they will believe you’re after their position. And even when your idea is used, it will be called that creative director’s work and you won’t be acknowledged. Tell me, how on earth do you expect to work your way up the ladder? Walk straight to the CEO’s office and tell him about how you have countless ideas but they keep getting stolen? You can’t do that! And that’s a bye-bye to that dream of getting a well-paying job.”
I grew silent as his words hit me. I couldn’t deny the fact that he was right. The field I specialized in was a very competitive one and there were people who have been doing it for years and haven’t moved anywhere.
“But there is a possibility that one could hire me as a creative director,” I said, stubbornly.
Justin rolled his eyes. “Yeah, there is. A start-up company. Go ahead if that’s what you want.”
I fumed as I folded my arms across my chest, realizing my lack of options.
Justin put his hand on my shoulder. “You can’t throw this opportunity away because the CEO is a rude punk as you put it.Your job will rarely bring you around him, that’s the CCO’s job. Only if you’re promoted to the position of the CCO though and that’s aiming pretty high at this age.”
As usual, Justin was right. This reminded me of how we’d always been. Whenever I was about to make a rash decision, Justin has always been the one to help me reorganize my thoughts and not do things in anger. Looks like he was still doing so.
I smiled at him. “You are right! I shouldn’t lose an opportunity because of some rude…”
“Maybe you are the rude one, Ashley,” Justin interrupted me immediately. “You know you have that razor sharp mouth, so you shouldn’t fault Ian Maxwell.”
I huffed as I pulled him by the hair, shaking him. “You’ve been bewitched by those stupid green eyes.”
Justin laughed, swatting my hand off. “You mean like you?”
“What!”
“This is it, Ashley Lane,” Justin said, sighing heavily. “The hands of mother fate is at work. This is the beginning of your destiny.”
He laughed out loud when he saw my dumbfounded face. “I mean what kind of coincidence brings you to your future CEO’s radar three different times before you even start your work? If it isn’t fate, tell me…”
“Say one more thing about fate and I assure you, you won’t have legs to go on that date of yours,” I said in a flat tone, my eyes daring Justin to say anymore.
Justin raised his hands up as he backed out of the sitting room. “Coincidence, it is.”
Having made up my mind, I read through the rest of the email and found out that I’ve been asked to show at the HR department tomorrow to finalize the rest of my employment details. It was a no-reply email, so I didn’t bother with one and just sat back on the couch, wondering what to make of how my life was turning now.
Well as Justin said, my work wouldn’t exactly bring me under the radar of the CEO; I was under the CCO, who is the one that communicates all of our works to the higher ups. Looks like things might be really looking up for me.
The next day, I showed up at the HR department to meet with the overenthusiastic Barry Stewart once again. We discussed my responsibilities, whom I’d be working under, then finally the pay. The pay that I was offered was really huge and this had me surprised, but somehow, Barry mistook my stupefied state for disapproval and increased the amount by another 10%.
By the time I left the office with my employee guidelines book in hand, I was still so shocked that everything felt so surreal. Looks like the universe was finally smiling down on me; my dead parents must be working wonders up there.
I was so elated with how things had progressed and even more happy after reading through the employee guidelines book and found out that I mostly had no business even appearing before the CEO unless my ideas were chosen and I needed to present it to them. I knew times like this will come but there would be a long desk between us. This was definitely a dream come true.
Chapter 5
Ashley
I took in a deep breath and walked towards the office of Simone Jacobs, the CCO, armed with a copy of the revised proposal. This is the tenth revision I’ve made on this proposal and yet I had a feeling that it was also going to be rejected. I knew this because it was obvious whoever was rejecting my proposals was getting a good kick out of making me feel so incompetent.
It's been two hellishly beautiful months at IM Corps. Hellish because the first project I was put on was rejected with a note to revise and resubmit from the CEO, who didn’t drop any further information on what was wrong with it. And ever since then, I’ve been working on this same proposal. Simone keeps saying the whole idea was good and couldn’t understand why Ian keeps rejecting it, but I could already tell why. This was his way of retaliating.
And that was where the beautiful part of my work here came in. The pay was good. Even though I felt underutilized because none of my ideas have been put into action while all other directors were working on one thing or the other, the pay here for these past two months was enough to get me my own apartment and I couldn’t be any happier.
Happy but hateful of the fact that the other directors were beginning to look at me like an incompetent child. That made it worse since I was the youngest. Every other creative director here was almost ten years older than I am and they seemed to hate me for that fact. There were even rumors going around among the creative assistants about me only getting into the company through nepotism.