Chapter 39
CHAPTER 39
G emma turned in a circle. Every single table in the café had a thin piece of paper taped to the surface. A piece of paper she hadn’t noticed before. And yet, as she read it, she felt her jaw dropping open.
We are now using an online ordering platform, she read. Please scan the QR card and make your order and payment online. There is no need to leave your seat. Thank you. The Waterfront Café.
“Gemma?” Mr Jordan’s voice came again. “I’m not sure I’m doing this right. It keeps asking me to put a number in to pay. Can’t I just pay you the way I normally do?”
“Yes, you can,” Gemma said, although she was marching away from Mr Jordan and the other customers and heading straight towards the kitchen. Even as she pushed open the door, her stride didn’t break and her pace didn’t falter. This was not happening.
“What the hell have you done?” she said.
Kent was standing over the hob, cooking what appeared to be a full English, even though she hadn’t taken the order for one. There, next to him, was a new black machine she had never seen before.
“So, first order went without any issue,” he said. “That’s good to know. How’s the new till? Did you get your drinks orders through too?”
“What? What do you mean ‘new till’?”
“To work with the upgraded system? I assume you thought it was all self-explanatory.”
She hadn’t thought it was possible to be any more furious, and yet her pulse was pounding so hard she was sure something was going to burst.
“You bought a completely new till and implemented an entirely new system of ordering without even mentioning it to me?”
His face didn’t show so much as a flicker of remorse. If anything, he looked smug.
“It was in the email I sent around a week ago. I said the date that we were changing the system over and offered you the option of doing training on it last night. I assumed the fact that you hadn’t commented meant you didn’t have a problem.”
So that was where the smugness came from. Her back teeth ground together as she stepped towards him.
“I haven’t even seen the damn email, which you knew. There is no way I would have let you do this otherwise. Online ordering? Half our customers don’t even have smartphones.”
“I doubt that’s true,” Kent said, his smugness climbing up another notch. “Honestly, I don’t see what the problem is. I’ve found a way to make the job more efficient without having to alter the menu or prices or anything else you’ve objected to so greatly. I thought you might be pleased.”
Gemma couldn’t respond. Her entire body was trembling with such fury she was struggling to draw breath.
“You might have got your uncle to agree to you staying for a little while, but don’t get comfy. There are only forty days left in this trial, and then you are out of here. You can mark my words.”
She didn’t care that she had shouted at him. That her voice was probably so loud that Mr Jordan and the other customers likely heard. The people who mattered knew what she was really like. They wouldn’t judge her for standing up for herself and this business. In fact, they’d likely thank her.
She turned around, ready to stride out, when he let out a dark chuckle.
“The eight-week trial isn’t for me, Gemma. It’s for you.”