Chapter 29
LINDSAY
I’d always liked our office building. It was near the airport, so there were constantly planes coming over, but I’d gotten so used to it that I hardly heard the noise anymore.
Since my employer was an airline and the employees I wrangled worked for it too, it made sense for us to be within spitting distance from the actual airport. Our offices were light and airy, and we looked out over a collection of runways with wide expanses of green grass between them.
My first day back at the office had been chaotic, and my second day wasn’t shaping up to be much better. It wasn’t even nine yet, but I was already putting out fires every time I turned around.
On the upside, it didn’t leave me much time to think about Jaxon. While I usually prided myself on having everything in hand and neatly organized, the chaos I walked in on offered a welcome reprieve.
Anna, my newish assistant, stood in front of my desk with a tablet in one hand and a takeout coffee for me in the other. “Yesterday was all about sorting out the most urgent things that happened while you were gone. Today we’ll have to work on returning a ton of calls and messages.”
“Let’s do it.” I waved her into the wingback chair across from me and held out my hand. “Thanks for the coffee—and for holding the fort down while I was gone.”
“Just don’t go away again anytime soon.” She smiled as she slid the coffee across the desk. “I swear it was like people could smell you were gone. The entire workforce seemed to have a collective meltdown.”
My nose wrinkled. “Was it really that bad?”
“Yep.” She turned the screen of her tablet to me so I could see how many unread emails there were in her complaints folder as she scrolled.
“A bunch of the ground staff got drunk on the premises again, the luggage handlers might be planning a strike for the end of the month, and there have been a string of infractions by individual employees.”
I rolled my head back and said a quick prayer for patience before jumping in.
Picking up my coffee, I opened the corresponding folder in my emails that she had open on her tablet.
“Is there anything that needs our attention more desperately than any other matters? Or can we work through it systematically from oldest to newest?”
“Systematically should be fine.” She glanced down when her device started vibrating in her hands, an annoyed scowl flickering across her features.
“Actually, maybe we should start with that one first. He’s been calling all day and he’s put in a few calls over the last couple of weeks. He’s getting terminated.”
A loud huff came out of her when the vibrating started up again seconds after it ended. “I don’t think he actually understands English. I’ve told him so many times that you’d get back to him as soon as you’re able to.”
“People tend to get worked up when they’re threatened with termination,” I said calmly. “Let’s get his papers in order and we’ll call his managers before we speak to him. Have you got his file on there?”
“Yeah. Name’s Jackson.” My heart skipped a beat, but then I realized that the spelling was probably different, even though the pronunciation was the same. “They’ve sent him to us because apparently he didn’t show up to work for a week or something.”
My stomach twisted, but it had to be a coincidence. Taking in a reassuring breath, I exhaled it slowly and focused on my job. I could not allow not-my-Jaxon to distract me here.
“What’s his direct manager’s number? Have you got it?
” Mentally running over our termination checklist, I identified the next steps we had to take.
“We should double-check our own system, speak to management, and get all our ducks in a row before entering into official communication with the employee.”
Terminations could get rough. Coming across unprepared or not having all our evidence on hand only made it so much worse. Anna nodded and tapped on her screen a few times, and a contact email from her popped up on my laptop a few seconds later.
“The manager is Steve Robertson,” she said. “He’s also the one who sent the file over here. They’ve already been in contact with the employee to alert him to the fact that steps are being taken against him. There’s a note on the file about the call.”
“It’s a good thing they’ve gotten the ball rolling.” I took a few sips of my rapidly cooling coffee, but I’d rather have cold coffee than a hot office. The air-conditioning in there was even more effective than the one—
No. Stop it. Not here. Not now. Not him.
“Can you check our logs to see whether we’ve had any communication from him prior to the incident in question or his incessant phone calls now?” I asked Anna. “I’ll get Steve on the line, but we need to update him about what we’ve got as well.”
“Checking now,” she said. “Our office didn’t receive anything directly, but I’ll include a search to our general administration emails as well. I suppose most communications with the entire department go there, whereas we only get the stuff specifically addressed to our own email addresses.”
“True.” I’d have thought she would know that I needed a wider search, but she was probably just a little overwhelmed. She’d only been with us for a few months, and I loved her, but leaving her alone for so long would’ve been intimidating.
Most larger companies, like ours, had hundreds of people working in their HR departments. Employees working in other divisions of the company hardly ever knew our names or exactly which person to send things to.
We were the backbone, the people who kept the order among the most important assets of any business—its workers—and made sure the employee lifecycle was properly managed. Most of the people we actually worked for, the employees, avoided us like the plague because our role was often misunderstood.
Even those who understood what we did rarely knew anyone within the department’s responsibilities so well that they knew who to contact.
It was slightly worrying that Anna hadn’t performed the proper search when the phone was already ringing for Steve’s office line, but I’d deal with her in a few minutes.
Perhaps I should’ve gotten someone a little more experienced to stand in for me.
We would have to tread carefully with this particular termination.
If the employee whose name I’d rather not think about, even though it was spelled differently, was already blowing up Anna’s phone, he wouldn’t take getting fired lying down.
We had to follow our procedures to the letter. If the ball had been dropped already, we’d simply have to pick it back up.
“Hello?” Steve said when the call connected.
“This is Lindsay Flinn calling from Human Resources. I understand you’ve referred an employee to us for disciplinary steps to be taken.”
“Yeah. Guy took off without notifying anyone here. He claims to have had some vacation days saved up and says he did contact you, but I obviously wouldn’t know anything about that. It’s your domain, so I referred his file.”
“Sure.” I didn’t like the manager’s tone, but managers were employees too. They were as loathe to speak to us as anyone else most of the time.
Anna caught my eye, so I asked Steve to hold. He didn’t sound too happy about it, but he’d just have to wait. I was back, and I was making sure everything was getting done properly.
If he’d thought his referral was where his role ended, he was sorely mistaken.
“It looks like he did reach out to us before he disappeared.” She frowned. “I didn’t see this before.”
I let out an internal sigh. This is why I don’t like going away. First, I get my heart broken and now, my portfolio is broken.
“That’s okay. We’ll go over some of the departmental guidelines when I’m done with Steve. It’ll be good for both of us to brush up.”
She smiled as she nodded, and I went back to the phone. “It would appear that he did reach out to us before he absconded from the job. We’ll go over what we have and contact him. I’ll keep you apprised of the situation.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” He hung up without saying goodbye.
Story of my fucking life.
I’d been meaning to ask him some questions about the employee and his service record, but I’d have to do that in a follow-up call.
I also needed some more details about the guy, and then I needed to compile a separate file for the disciplinary proceedings. Ember had no idea why I loved my job so much, but I really, really did.
“Will you get Jackson on the phone for me please?” I asked Anna. “We need to ask him to come in. I’ll get started on the forms we need to fill out.”
“Sure thing.” She smiled as she returned his earlier calls. “Thank God I finally have something legit to say to him. That man does not like hearing no for an answer.”
No one does when it involves losing their jobs. I definitely needed to spend some more time on Anna’s training. She was clever, though. She’d pick up on the finer details soon enough.
Her smile slipped when he didn’t answer. “What do I do now?”
“Send him an email to the same address he contacted us from, as well as any other addresses listed in his personnel file. Ask him to come into the office and tell him that we’ll talk about the issue.”
A few minutes later, before I’d even gotten around to printing all the paperwork from his file and was only about halfway through the official disciplinary forms, her tablet chimed with a response. “He says he’ll come in immediately.”
Well, at least now I know it’s not my Jaxon. He would never be so prompt.