{ #2 } I Would Give Him The Moon (MxM || 18+)

Chapter 4 - Electric Blue Eyes

(Liam's POV - Mon. 26 August 2013)

"Are you ever going to bring me these reports or do I have to come and get them myself??" Mr. Jones barks in the phone.

"I'm sorry Sir... my computer crashed and I got it back only an hour ago. I'll be up in less than ten minutes... I'm really sorry..." I hear a grunt and the line goes dead. I don't know if I can do this anymore... at least with someone like Mr. Jones.

It was really my luck that my laptop crashed just as I was about to print all these reports for my current manager. I tried to restart it several times, but the damn machine just wouldn't work and in the end, I had to take it to one of the IT guys so that he could fix it. It had already taken me like ages to finalize all the PowerPoint presentations. I even worked till very late at home last night to make sure that I would only have to review everything quickly this morning and print all the documents. Making a presentation on PowerPoint is not that difficult, but if you want to make something that will look nice enough and more importantly coherent, you need to understand what it is talking about. The problem is that I don't know much about Finance in general and it took me quite some time to get what Mr. Jones expected. It would have helped if I had had more time to get used to the job and that department in particular, but I only had two days working with Carola.

On my second day at Pierce Corporation, I met up with Elena again and she took me to Carola's office on the 19th floor. Elena explained that the finance assistant is pregnant and often getting sick, which is why she thought I should train with Carola first because if she needs to call in sick earlier than the usual term, I would be able to take over her job while they looked for another assistant to replace her. My first two days with the finance team went pretty well. Carola introduced me to the whole team. She said that for the first two days, she wanted me to spend time with the various teams of the finance department, such as the accounts receivable and accounts payable teams and the credit control, so that they could explain what their jobs consisted in, and that she would start working with me on the Thursday.

The problem is that on the Thursday, she called in sick and never came back, leaving me all by myself to answer all the requests from the various managers. I am not a complete dumbass and I was trained on Excel in university, so I was able to do some consolidations for the Controller and the other managers, but it took me the hell of a time for each of the requests. I was scared to make mistakes or to misunderstand the purpose of the exercise. I was even more scared to ask for help or to bother the managers with more questions. Some of them were rather patient and kind enough to come to me and explain what they were expecting me to do, but others just threw me an email with a vague description of the request saying it was urgent.

Needless to say that my days were filled with stress and that more than once I thought about giving up and leaving. I can understand that Carola felt too sick to come to the office, but she could have at least given me her phone number and helped me from home. I wouldn't have bothered her all the time but it would have been good to know I could call her if I had a question on a specific subject. Instead of that, I had to manage all by myself to look into her files and folders. My only moment of relief every day has been my lunch break. From my second day, Elena has taken the habit to come and pick me up so that we could go together to the first floor for our lunch. Ally often joined us and on the Friday, when I told her about my situation, she very kindly and willingly proposed to spend the afternoon with me to show me a few things. As she said, we were lucky that Mr. Pierce was on vacation and that she had more time.

I also found out that Elena and Ally are good friends outside of work. Ally is quite a discreet woman in the sense that her position as the CEO's assistant doesn't really allow her to talk too much, but she is extremely funny and energetic. Elena, as an HR assistant, is also bound to secrecy, but she is more open to gossiping and, even though I am not really the gossiping kind, we had quite a few giggles at some anecdotes she told me about. I also patiently listened to her when she told me about a few people she doesn't particularly hold in her heart, like Mr. Jones or Carola. I usually don't judge people too quickly but the little bit I have seen so far was reinforced by Elena's opinions.