Leonore sat back from her computer, closed her eyes, and rubbed her face. These late hours were becoming intolerable. But work was work, and the client's deadline was fast approaching. She needed this contract to break into this segment of the market; there were not many architectural firms that could handle this kind of specialized design, and she wanted hers to become one of them. The good news was that after weeks of overtime and rework, the end was in sight; just a few more weeks at this pace and everything would work out. If only she wasn't so
tired
. Not so much physically, as just emotionally and mentally drained. It would be better once this contract was done. She just had to get from here to there, and with precious little in the way of enjoyable diversion. She sighed, trying not to think about how long it had been since
that
kind of diversion.
Her reverie was interrupted by a
bloop-bleep
sound from down the hall. She rolled her eyes. That was the sound of her IT guy, Eduardo, on his phone, texting God-knows-who at this hour. She'd hired him from a staffing firm, and paid through the nose for the "on-site" support option. The staff of draftsmen, AutoCAD technicians, administrative assistants, and project planners was one of the best in the industry. She'd recruited them for their drive and for their skills. What she hadn't anticipated was that, collectively, they seemed to have some kind of a curse when it came to technology. Whether it was a printer jam, a set of spam emails, or malicious adware disguised as cute mouse cursors, her staff just couldn't seem to lay off.
With the deadline looming as closely as it was, she didn't have time to screw around. So long as any of her staff were in the building or dialed in remotely, there was IT support on-premises. Since Eduardo (he got so
touchy
if you called him Ed or Eddy) was paid by the hour, he had practically moved into her offices. On the plus side, he was a smart and effective worker; the productivity losses to various computer shenanigans had dropped off considerably.
On the other hand, he was so
smug
. He seemed to take a perverse delight in the fact that he was able to keep everything running with only about a quarter of his time, and spent the rest of his time playing video games or texting random people on her dime. And since she had taken to working such long hours, he was technically justified in sitting in her offices, hour after hour, just banking a not-insubstantial fee while he kicked back and relaxed.
Leonore told herself it was fine. He wasn't overly disruptive, she had budgeted for his fee, he didn't harass her workers.... It was fine. She just needed to not stress about minor details and get back to polishing her proposal. She leaned forward again, studying the language in the fee structure section. Yes, a small alteration here would be-
"DING DING DING! A WINNER ARE YOU!"
echoed down the hallway, snapping her focus instantly.
Goddamn it, that was the last straw.
Before even realizing it, she was on her feet and storming down the hallway to the little annex that he used as his workspace. As she rounded the corner, she saw him sitting there with some sort of handheld video game console perched in his lap, surrounded by a few computers. He looked up as she entered, and she could see the smug smile beginning to form.
"Late night, huh?" God. She just wanted to wipe that smirk off his face.
"What are you even DOING here at the moment, anyway? What the hell do I pay you for?" She demanded.
He pointed at one of the screens. "Your remote CAD consultant dude on the west coast is having trouble with his machine. It seems that he installed some kind of screen saver that he thought was cool and it came with a bunch of viruses." He indicated a progress bar. "We're about... 82% done with the cleanup, so he should be back to productive in about 10 minutes. Lucky for you guys that I'm right here on top of it." He smirked again.
She glared. "Luck has nothing to do with it. We're paying you a pretty good pile of money for your services, and you're sitting here playing god-knows-what on MY DIME!" She could feel the tension rising within her, threatening to boil over. Leonore didn't have time for this. She needed to either be working productively, or blowing off steam to enable her to work productively, and this wasn't helping. She looked down at him.
"Look. You're paying me to be available and to rapidly respond to things. You're paying me to make your company's smooth operation my #1 priority. And that's what you're getting. Would you prefer I dragged out the work or pretended to find things to do when everything's going smoothly? What exactly is it you want me to do between crisis?" He was trying to sound reasonable, but she couldn't get over that smirk. He obviously felt like he had her cold. In that moment, she made her decision.
"I'm not sure this arrangement is working out. I feel like I'm not getting your full effort. I'm going to need you to step of your level of effort or this particular gravy train is over." She saw his eyes go a little wider at the prospect of losing the easy income.
"Um, what exactly do you expect me to do? Right this minute, the virus-scan is running, and nothing else is wrong. If I go home, I'm going to be slower to respond to the next crisis. So, what, exactly should I be doing right now?" There was a tone of worry in his voice now. Good.
"I'll tell you what you need to do. You need to do
exactly as I tell you
." There was steel in her voice now.
"Huh?" His face was priceless. Gone was the swagger and the confidence, giving way to outright confusion. Excellent. This was going to be fun.
"
Kneel
". Her voice brooked no disagreement. This was her office, this was her company, and Eduardo needed to learn how to be a team player. She was the CEO. Clearly, it was her responsibility to administer the lesson.
Eduardo reacted to her voice automatically, and was halfway to the floor kneeling before he caught himself. "Wait, what are we doing?"
Leonore could sense his weakness in his voice. His pliability. The fact that he moved at all was a good sign. She could feel deep inside her that he was the kind of man who she could take charge of.