Either Or

“Close the door,” Gerhard instructed me as soon as I entered his office following him.

Hm? Either he wanted to give me a great, confidential assignment because he recognized my abilities and my value to the firm and its clients, or he wanted to reprimand me. I couldn't tell which it was because he maintained his neutral, expressionless face. However, he sat down behind his wide wooden desk without offering me a seat, leaving me standing. That wasn't a good sign, and I feared the worst. My throat tightened and I waited anxiously for what he had to say.

“Can you tell me what this is?”

He pushed a stack of printed paper toward me. I glanced at the cover sheet and recognized the document I had written the day before.

“That's the statement of claim I drew up yesterday.”

“And you wanted to send it without my countersignature?”

“You weren't in the office and the deadline is approaching,” I justified myself, “so I put it in the mail to make sure it got to the court on time.”

He wouldn't want to make a big deal out of such an insignificant formality, would he? I was a fully qualified lawyer and could file a lawsuit effectively even without my boss. It was much more important that our client won his case.

Gerhard remained as cold as an iceberg, turned a few pages, and pointed wordlessly to a passage in the text.

I read it. Blinked. Read it again.

Oh, God. What a mistake. I hadn't noticed it myself when writing and proofreading. But it was so serious that our client would inevitably have lost the case.

I grabbed the stack of papers and immediately headed for the door. “I'll correct it immediately.

“Too late.”

I didn't understand what Gerhard meant and disagreed with him. “If I do it right away and drop it off at the court's mailbox today, we'll still meet the deadline.”

He looked at me intently. “I came to the office last night, checked the outgoing mail, and noticed what you had done. The document has long since been corrected and sent. Listen, Sonja, we didn’t establish the dual control principle for nothing, but to prevent exactly this kind of thing. If you can’t stick to it, you have no place here.”

First I turned pale as a ghost, then bright red. If Gerhard fired me, it would be the end of my lofty career plans.

“There must be some way I can make up for this mistake,” I stammered quietly.

“Come here.”

What was he up to now? I walked around his desk, the paper still in my hand.

“I am convinced,” he lectured, “that the best and most lasting way to learn is to feel the consequences of your actions firsthand."

He grabbed my waistband and—whoosh—he had pulled it down, exposing my butt.