Surprise Me Tomorrow

11. ErosBross

I see more colors on the third floor. A deep purple carpet sprawls over the floor, contrasting the white base of the wall and ceiling. The half-wall cubicles are painted in different bright colors, which remind me of Chloe's kindergarten school. Maybe that's the idea. Maybe whoever designed this office space wanted to bring people back to the original purpose of their product: playtime.

"Charlotte Garnett!"

I turn around and find Alex, the personnel head, walking in my direction with a wide grin. "Good morning, Alex," I say, sweeping my eyes over the office which is still pretty empty. "Um, I'm not sure where to go from here."

He shakes my hand with an enthusiastic grip. "Good morning, and welcome to the family! You will be in the green-booth team over there. It's the marketing team. Come, follow me," he replies before starting to walk across the office and stopping in the middle. "Yellow is for the personnel team, blue over there is for finance and accounting, orange is for our IT, red for quality assurance, pink is for our designers, and uh, did I miss any teams?"

"I'm not sure. For now, I just see rainbows everywhere."

Alex laughs. "We will talk about the rainbow more later, but first, we will meet Mr. Sauer, our new CEO. He's also starting today."

He spins around and walks ahead, almost bouncing. Alex is such a cheerful leader, forcing my mind to jump to my former HR chief in the Remington group. These two people are like day and night.

"I believe Mrs. Horn has informed you that we're going to split the marketing team into two different lines," he says. "We're going to separate the cubicles too, with different shades. What do you think about teal for the cubicle color?"

"Love the color," I reply as my eyes roam over the office once again, making sure they don't have the exact color he just mentioned.

Alex brings me to a big room in the corner, which I assume is the CEO's office. Its wall and door are made of glass but we can't see anything at the moment. The white shades are completely down, blocking the prying eyes.

He knocks on the door twice and pushes the door open without waiting for an answer. To my surprise, at least twelve people are already there. They stand side by side, making a circle, while Mrs. Horn sits on the managerial desk with the new CEO standing next to her.

Leopold is only wearing a white dress shirt and dark blue tie. His ruined suit is gone, probably on the way to the laundry. He glances at me but he doesn't give any sign that we ran into each other thirty minutes ago.

"Thank you for the warm welcome," he says to everyone in the room. "It's an honor to be here at ErosBross, to be a part of you. At the moment, we might not know each other. And unfortunately, if we don't know, we can't care. Thus, I would like to meet with each team to get a better understanding of this organization, and of course, to build relationships with all of you. Let's start today after lunch."