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A/N - I hate having to do this, but since NovelHD has already started to pirate some of my books, here we go. These works are mine. My poor little brain came up with the plots and characters, and I'd really prefer you to not steal them. If you're reading this on a site that is NOT Wattpad then it is most certainly stolen.
Thanks!
Loiosh
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"Your coffee ma'am!" the barista called while handing over a latte. He must be a new worker, as I didn't recognize him. His nametag said Drew though, and I'd remember that for the next time. I liked being able to remember the people I see a lot, since it made these interactions a little less tedious.
I'd need the caffeine to get me woken up and into a better frame of mind if I was going to make it through the day. With a sigh, I took a big sip, and then nodded gratefully at the young man who'd made the drink. It was good, and just what I needed. Within ten minutes, I was boarding a MUNI light rail train to work. It was the easiest way for me to get around San Francisco and didn't require me to drive in the brutal downtown traffic. I liked that! Six years of living in the states after leaving London, and I still had an issue about which side of the road to drive on! Combining that with heavy traffic was a bad mix.
It was a gorgeous June day, and I didn't care. My mood dropped with every second that I got closer and closer to the office building that housed my work. My makeshift office. My desk. My chair. My computer monitors. My damned bosses. Yep, it was another Monday.
I didn't always hate Mondays. When I was growing up, I liked my private school, so it was never a bother. Even at Uni, I enjoyed my Mondays. When I joined the workforce at Nimbleworth Advertising back home, I enjoyed my job and the people that I worked with. I was motivated and doing well, but there was no chance of getting a promotion. It was a big company, but the more senior people were all young too, or at least too young to be retiring.
So, when the CEO said that they were starting a new division of the agency in America, I was a natural person to send over there. I had dual citizenship because while my father was Dutch, my mother was American, and there would be no visa issues. I'd also had several successful ad campaigns under my belt, and there was the prospect of a new city and a new job with upward mobility was a great opportunity for me.
I said yes as soon as I was asked.
It took six months for everything to sink in, but I've regretted every day for the last six years.
When Nimbleworth Advertising was expanding, they could have hired new people, and sent over some experienced people from the home office in London to help train them. But they were worried that a bunch of people with foreign accents would come off as pretentious to the Americans they were trying to pitch their company to, so instead they bought and invested in a small existing company in San Francisco. One of the other reasons that I was picked was that while I was raised in England, my home life gave me an odd mix of accents that was hard to place.
When I arrived in San Francisco, the company was just Zach Adkins, who was in charge of everything, his son Bryan, and Bryan's best friend Jaxon Thornton. The four of us worked together to land several campaigns. It was billed as a competition to see who should lead the company into the future, but I soon learned better. As soon as the campaign was landed, I did all the work to get them across the finish line. The others couldn't seem to accomplish much of anything other than schedule a few meetings. In my opinion, I'd done more than enough to warrant a promotion. However, doing all the work wasn't enough for Zach, and he instead promoted his son and his friend to the Creative Director and Account Manager positions, while they both reported to Zach in the Account Director role.
So, we had three managers, and me.
And yet when there was an issue with an account, I was the one called, because none of our new leadership could seem to be able to find solutions for the clients. But it got the office off the ground. We had business now, and a portfolio to show other clients. Over the next five years we'd more than tripled in size and hired another four white male executives. Not a single woman. I hadn't even been interviewed for any of them as I wasn't qualified evidently. Even worse, the old CEO, Mr. Chambers, who had sent me over was gone, and the new one didn't know me at all. I had no backup in the London office anymore.
This spring, I'd already given myself a deadline of six months to get a promotion. If that didn't happen, then I was either getting a new job or transferring back to London. There was no point in me working myself to death when it wasn't appreciated at all. Three of those months were already gone, and it wasn't looking promising.
When I arrived at the table in my commandeered conference room, I hooked my laptop up to the monitors and got to work. I'd already done a bit over the weekend, so it wasn't like I needed to clear out email or anything. But I did have to work on a new web campaign for a resort down in Hawaii. Normally I would have flown down for the meeting, but Jax had gone instead, and then came back and made me redo the meetings via video chat because he took virtually no notes and couldn't remember anything about what they'd told him. But he was happy to say he got laid!
I love looking like an idiot in front of the client.
"Hey Kris!" said Elliot as he walked past my office. "Have a good weekend?" He was a fellow art director, and we tended to stick together to bounce ideas off each other. He usually worked with Sergio, a copywriter, where I ended up working alone because if they gave me someone to work with my partner would probably wonder why I was doing things that weren't my responsibility.
"Same as always. Nothing exciting," I replied. "Soccer yesterday was about it."
"You need to get out!" He just shook his head at me. "Come have dinner with me and Amy some night."
"Elliot, your wife must be ready to pop at this point, and there is no way I need to be there for that!"
"Fine. Then do something with Sergio. You know he hits up all the bars on the weekends, maybe you can find yourself a nice girl," he suggested.
Yeah, I was open about my sexuality. That meant that Jax and Bryan left me alone thankfully, but I had a feeling it might have also contributed to my lack of interviews and promotions. But since they hadn't hired any women at all for management positions, it was more than likely I needed a dick to qualify.
"I don't need another disappointment. I've done the clubs, and it isn't working for me." Honestly, dating in general wasn't working for me. How do you date someone when your schedule only gives you part of a Sunday off because you're so busy doing other people's work that you need the weekend and late nights to catch up on your own stuff?
"At some point you're going to have to leave, you know that right?" he asked gently while looking around to make sure that nobody overheard.
"I know. I'm already almost out of time on my self-imposed deadline. My resume is already up to date, and I might be gone soon depending on how things go," I promised. Elliot and I didn't have any hidden topics when it came to work. I knew he was looking too, since he should have been in consideration for several of the positions that had gone to other executives. Right now, there were now a dozen ad teams and only 2 creative directors and account managers. They could hire another of each, or better yet promote some of us, but so far, they were resisting that. If they did hire, and I was passed over again, I was going to leave. It was a done deal.
"You better take me with you!" he whispered. I knew he was only half kidding, since we both were some of the teams that reported to Jax and Bryan. I was doing almost all of Jax's account manager jobs and Bryan didn't seem to have a creative bone in his body to handle the creative director job. We'd have to come up with the concepts ourselves, and then he would always take the credit. Amazing work on his part.
I nodded quickly. "If I can, I absolutely will. Would Sergio want to go too?"
"Nah, he likes the city too much. If the job is here, then he would, but if it is a job that needs relocation, then he'd be passing on it."
"Do you have any location restrictions?" I asked. "Because I'll go anywhere in the world at this point, I have nothing tying me down here." I'd already jumped across one ocean, and I had no problem doing it again, even if it was a different ocean.
He tilted his head back as he thought about that. "I guess anywhere in the United States, but I'll ask my wife if she has any countries she doesn't want to go to. I guess it might not matter at this point. I doubt she would want to before Aubrey is born, and then an even longer wait while she's a newborn. You might be on your own." He looked dejected at the thought, and I could tell how much this place was sapping the life from him, much like mine.
"Hey Elliot, is Kris in there?" came a voice from down the hall. It sounded like Chelsea, one of the other copywriters on Jax's team.
"Yeah, do you need her?"
"Nah, I was just looking for both of you. Creative meeting in the big boardroom!"
Oh joy, a Monday morning meeting. Everyone knows how much I love those!
***
A/N - Just an FYI about this book. It all started with a comment I left in a book ages ago about two people fighting for dominance with their tongues as they kiss (which always makes me giggle). That comment then made me write the Tongue Dominance Fighting League short story in my Short Story Soup (which is obviously a ridiculous premise). But then THAT story made me think about what a league like that would really be like, and since they needed advertising... here we are. A completely silly story about a kissing league. So, have fun with it!