Employee of the Year

Chapter 9 - Career Woman

“What’s your latest special project?”

Gina rolled her eyes. “You have to promise not to laugh.”

“Oh no. Not golf clubs again?”

“Worse than that. I have to help Marcus’s new wife, Bianca.”

The name Bianca rang a bell. I remember seeing in the local gossip papers that Marcus recently married a fashion model, a woman from Argentina who was twenty years younger than him. The year before, Marcus divorced his second wife Melanie Caldwell, a blonde actress who used to star in daytime soap operas. Marcus and Melanie had been together for a decade, hosting splashy charity events that got their picture in the news. Melanie was almost the same age as Marcus, and the rumor throughout the company was that he finally decided it was time to trade her in for a newer model.

The divorce was nasty and hard fought, but Melanie seemed to fare pretty well. She ended up receiving a beachfront house in Redondo and alimony payments of $100,000 per month. In other words each month Marcus would write his ex-wife a check equal to the Employee of the Year Award I was killing myself to win. It hardly seemed fair, but then I’d never been married to him, so who was I to judge?

“You’re helping Marcus’s new wife? What does he have you doing for her? I thought she was in modeling.”

“She was. I think once you hit thirty your modeling career starts winding down. She wants to start a new career as an interior designer. She’s got her first project remodeling a kitchen in a mansion in Beverly Hills. It’s for one of Marcus’s friends.”

 “Does she know what she’s doing?”

“Of course not.”

“That’s a lot of work; you have to hire the contractors and purchase the materials.” I had a cousin who specialized in floors and kitchen counters, so I knew a little about the business. “How is she going to get the job done if she doesn’t have any experience?”

“That’s what I have to figure out,” Gina said.

I threw down my napkin in frustration. “That sucks, Gina. I thought Marcus wasn’t going to give you any more of his odd jobs. Why is he doing this? Is he mad at you for what happened with the Cultural Outreach Program?”

Gina was still smiling, taking my disappointment in stride. “No, not at all. He blames the Human Resource Department for doing such a poor job of screening the applicants. He’s furious they didn’t do a better background check on Mauricio.”

“Really?”

“Oh yeah. Last week, we fired Betty Sinclair, the senior HR vice president.”

“Wow, he did? Do you think she saw it coming?” I was hardly an expert, but I’d always thought our HR department was pretty useless.

“No, Betty didn’t have a clue. It was kind of awkward. Usually when someone gets canned, they’re supposed to be accompanied by HR staff to ensure proper procedures are followed before the security guards walk them out of the building. Since Betty was head of HR, we had to get her people to set everything up behind her back. The way it worked was this: One of her staff took her out to lunch while the others packed up her boxes, changed the lock on her office, and drafted her separation agreement. Once she got back from lunch, we pulled the trigger. She signed the form, then Charlie and the guards escorted her out of the building and it was through. They say Betty stood with her boxes in the parking lot and cried for thirty minutes straight. She was really bawling and screeching. Charlie had to send down one of the guards to put her in her car and get her out of there before one of the execs complained about the noise.”