Doug Isn't Happy

“Robbie, my office,” Doug called down the hallway to me, then disappeared back through his door.

I grunted softly. I still hadn’t made it into my office yet, so I dropped my bag inside the door to mine and headed down the hall to his.

“Have you talked to Ash yet today?” I asked by way of a greeting since he hadn’t bothered with one either.

Doug was buttoned up today, full suit, and that meant he either had a meeting with one of the bigger clients for a major conference or convention, or a planned C-Suite meeting. He was also sweating, which was odd considering it was still early and the air conditioning was working. “No, why?” he asked as he stood behind his desk, my conversational gambit to distract him working.

“He caught me on my way in,” I said. “The Rashid’s fiancee that’s coming in? Major demands. Expensive demands.”

Doug winced. “How expensive?”

“For us? A block of tickets to every show we have moving forward,” I said. “For Food and Drink, start with five bottles of Dom today and work your way down. And Ash has to swing some ridiculous shit as well.”

“Fuck,” Doug muttered, looking down at his desk and shuffling some papers. “That’s- Fuck. Can you work with Jonas on the tickets?”

“You mean tell Jonas it’s happening and have him handle it,” I said, not making it a clarifying question.

Doug grimaced. “No, I mean- Yes, fine, tell Jonas it needs to happen. But you don’t have anything over Jonas right now, Robbie. He’s filling up those empty slots in the ballroom bookings steadily and you haven’t gotten a single one.”

So my distraction hadn’t worked.

I sucked in a breath and held it for a moment, willing myself not to snap at my boss, and then let it out sharply. “Jonas is taking reservations, Doug, but that’s all he’s doing. He’s dropping giant steaming piles of turd all across the next month of scheduling and not doing anything for those bookings because he knows it’s my zone to manage. I haven’t had time to track down new, small business because I’m busy doing my regular tasks, covering Tan’s ass, and fixing the mess Jonas is doling out in front of me.”

Doug sighed, shaking his head and shuffling papers on his desk again, then spoke without looking up at me. “That sounds an awful lot like all the things we pay you for, Robbie. It’s your job. I gave you the inside info about why this was important and you haven’t done anything on it yet. Jonas doesn’t know why it’s important and it’s not even his department.”

“Did you not hear what I said?” I asked. “You gave him every opportunity to throw me under the bus while taking zero accountability for it.”

“There’s meetings happening today about the shake up,” Doug said, looking up at me with a frown. “I’m not expecting anything major, but it’s laying the foundations for the changes that are going to happen. I need to show better projections. I need us to be so overachieving that it’s undeniable - Jonas is helping with that and you aren’t right now.”

I sucked on my teeth for a moment. This was the weasel side of Doug. The selfish side. I didn’t see it that often, but that was mostly because I did my job and then some without giving him a reason to come at me.

“The VIP’s assistant asked for a meeting with someone from our team,” Doug continued. “Sometime later today. You will make time for it, and you will handle anything that comes out of it.”

I clenched my jaw and grunted softly. He was killing two birds with one stone by putting me on a job like that - first, if this lady wanted to throw a party in one of the smaller VIP ballrooms or something, I was the man to manage it anyways. By all rights it probably should have been Tan getting put on it, but if the VIP was as demanding as she seemed, the kid would get run over or make a bad impression for our team. Second, if she did want to slide in bookings for something, it would **** me to accommodate her because I needed to pad my stats after this conversation.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll handle it.”

“What?” Doug asked.

“Nothing, just trying to figure out what the hell you’re thinking,” I sighed. Which was partially, but not entirely, true. I was also considering whether I should warn him to look at what Jonas was booking in. Or even just check in on the plans for tomorrow - Doug had specifically told me not to get involved with the Lau wedding and the shit show that Jonas had caused by booking that Sorority birthday party in the same room during their set-up time. ‘Tan and Jonas have it,’ he’d told me.

Doug’s look of annoyance as he bent back to his computer was enough for me at the moment, so I took the out and backed out of his office and headed for mine.

Vanessa’s points from Tuesday talking about the whole situation were running through my mind. Not that I liked the idea of playing office politics, let alone undercutting someone, but Doug had really pushed my fucking buttons in there. And taking him out at the knees really wouldn’t be that hard - all I had to do was focus on me, instead of on helping everyone else. Do my job. Handle my tasks. Not cover for Tan, not fix Jonas’s fuck ups.

Let them all sink or swim on their own for a little while. Give people the chance to see what things were like when I wasn’t on top of things - the week before the trip I’d put in so many extra hours to make sure everything was set up for me being away, it really hadn’t been a test for them.

But. But. Was that really me? And what about the people who it could hurt, like the Lau’s who were marrying off their daughter and expecting a perfect evening of celebration? It wasn’t fair to them to let things start getting shaky or fall apart when I knew I could keep it on track and make their event go smooth and effortless for them.

Sitting at my own desk, I shook my head and drummed my fingers on my keyboard to wake up my computer.

Doctor Samson’s points about me needing to focus more internally, on my own needs and feelings, were only making this all feel even more complicated.

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