...to put him in his place.
She watched Robert’s puckering, rolling cheeks as he ground his back teeth, his focus riveted on the report she’d put together for him in their weekly prep before the Management Committee meeting. The half dozen pages she’d presented him with a few minutes before were like ammunition for his weekly assault on his fellow executives. They contained all the key operating data and metrics for the previous week – sales volumes, production actuals versus target, inventory, expenditures, and progress – or lack thereof – on key projects, the most strategic of which was Athena: the development program for the new product scheduled to launch in September.
This was the most important part of her job – her job security – because her boss, VP of Finance, Robert Bokitis, had a brilliant mind but an impatience with detail, and a disturbing compulsion to lord it over his peers, to make them look bad in any way possible, thus endlessly establishing himself as their superior. He was never happier than when he was staring down one of the other VP’s, watching them squirm as he peppered them with awkward questions about their area of responsibility – even if the issue wasn’t particularly bad, he preened and gloated on their stuttering inability to offer an instant response to some minute corner of their operation. In short, he was a complete bastard.
In the vacuum of leadership left vacant by their actual leader, CEO Linda Hines - inarticulate, indecisive, ineffectual – Robert assumed the role of her attack dog, which he seemed free to do as long as she permitted it – and she had permitted it as long as Judy had been at Pyrotech.
Judy watched Robert assimilate the data she’d gathered and interpreted for him, loading the gun he would shortly fire at his fellow VP’s.
She glanced at her watch: unbeknownst to Robert, Judy’s Tuesday morning routine included a surreptitious round of briefings to the other execs, to prepare them for what was coming. It was easy with the women – they often held clandestine briefings in the ladies’ room; it was more challenging, but hardly impossible with the men. Judy prided herself on maintaining the balance of power by arming both sides – but if Robert ever found out she was deliberately undermining him, she would be shit-canned. Well, that was too bad – she loathed him and liked and admired the other executives and she kind of loved the thrill and risk of discovery. Anyone who thought finance and accounting were dull should change places with her for one day – a Tuesday.
“Humph,” Robert’s face brightened in a nasty smile. “I see Athena is even farther off track than last week.”
Judy knew Robert so well that she could almost hear what he would be saying to the new development VP, Steve McGregor. Yes indeed, Robert would be feasting on the new guy’s misery today.
Judy couldn’t help herself. “I know, right? That new asshole has been here almost 24 hours and he still hasn’t fixed Athena. Man.”
Robert looked at her. He knew when she was baiting him – which she did regularly and recklessly – because of her near certain knowledge that he depended on her for these prep sessions. Without her, he would be firing blanks in the Management Committee meeting.
She smiled sweetly.
Robert’s expression was impatient and unamused. “He’s been here long enough to have some answers. He’d better be ready to tell us how he plans to fix Athena – or to admit that there’s no fixing it. I’ve got no time for the bullshit his predecessor tried to pull off with me.”
“Is that why you – ahem, excuse me – why Linda fired him.”
He stared at her. “I get done the shit that needs to get done around here.”
Judy continued to smile. “Yes, you do Robert. Anything else?”
He grunted.
Like a plover having yet again picked the crocodile’s teeth clean without being devoured, Judy rose and left his office.
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