Chapter 19 Walk All Over You
WALK ALL OVER YOU
“Nora, can you come into my office?”
“On the way,” she said, grabbing her tablet and moving into Ethan’s office.
Her first few days on her own after finishing last week with Blair.
Monday, Memorial Day, everyone was off. Yesterday she was solo and had so much work lined up the day flew by with her feeling rushed and behind and showing up first thing on Wednesday to get started.
Ethan calling her in a little before his meeting at ten wasn’t normal.
Nor was his tone of voice.
“That report you did yesterday, it’s the wrong timeframe.”
“What?” she asked, the dread filling the pit of her stomach, then rushing up her throat.
She’d had such a great weekend with Ethan after their minor hiccup on Friday.
Nothing long and hard like he promised. Nothing at all.
Mitchell arranged a dinner that night for Blair and all the senior staff and their assistants. She was invited, attended, didn’t make eye contact much with Ethan, let alone her father, then left to walk home before it was dark, not wanting to intrude on their closeness.
It was thirty minutes before he texted wanting to know where she was.
Saturday he hadn’t been happy, but she told him to get over it. They said a few words to clear the air, then had a great time the rest of the day and Sunday, him on the island Monday with his family.
Tuesday morning she dove into her job and was thrilled to finish her first project alone.
Only it sounded like she’d messed it up completely.
Talk about a great impression!
“Come here and look at my computer.”
She got up and moved behind his desk, the scent of his aftershave lingering in her nostrils. Not something she should think about when he was calling her in here to say she made a mistake.
“Did I overwrite formulas or something?”
She double and triple-checked everything equaled. Not even Blair did that, but she liked having safeguard formulas in place.
“Here is the report you gave me and here is the one from last year, same quarter. They are the same numbers.”
He was toggling back and forth, and she looked up at the dates he was showing her.
She reached across to grab his mouse, not caring that their hands touched. No way she did that wrong. How could she have?
“I don’t understand,” she said.
She pulled out the file from last year and last quarter. Just to make sure she did it right.
Did she accidentally use the data from accounting from last year by mistake?
Or did she put the wrong request in there herself since she was doing another project for him on last year’s data?
No matter how you added it up, she couldn’t do math.
“I’m lucky I caught it. I expected the net to be higher after the changes we’d made. It was less than last quarter so I went back through and noticed it. I just canceled my meeting. You’ll have to reschedule it for everyone once this is done.”
“I’m sorry, Ethan. I’m not sure what happened. I thought I double-checked everything. I’ll get to work on this right now.”
“I need you to do something else for me first,” he said. “Then you can do that. Since it’s internal and you’ll reschedule, it’s not a priority like the other things I needed today.”
“Got it,” she said, her face flame red. “Anything else?”
This was the last thing she needed. To put them in a position where he was going to doubt she could handle her job.
Or think that Blair had been covering for her the first two weeks.
“No.”
She moved away from him, but he reached for her hand and held it. “Yes?”
“Shit happens. Let it go. There are worse things, just pay attention.”
She nodded and slipped back to her office, pulled up the email requesting the information from accounting, noticed that she had asked for the right dates and put her head back. Dang it. She must have pulled the wrong file.
But then she pulled up the reports from accounting on the attachment she was sent and saw they sent the wrong year.
Still her fault for not catching it.
She emailed back the person who pulled the reports, explained that she was sent the wrong ones and needed the right ones ASAP, then got to work on the rest of her duties for the day.
By three, she had finished what was needed before she could fix her mistake, but noticed she still didn’t have the information.
It might be better to go down in person. If Heather was out, someone else could pull it for her, she was positive, and she could at least meet some more staff.
“Hi. Brenda, right?” she asked the assistant at the front desk. “Is Heather at her desk by any chance?”
“Sure, Nora. Go down the hall, take a right and she should be I think the fourth on the right.”
“Thanks,” she said. There were a lot of staff here, most working in cubes.
She moved down the hall, took a deep breath and told herself to be firm but friendly. Professional. She needed this information today so she could get started. She’d stay late to get it done and then present it to Ethan tomorrow and reschedule his meeting.
She found Heather’s desk; the woman looked up. “Yes?”
“I’m Nora. You sent me a report yesterday.”
“I did,” Heather said. “When you asked.”
She didn’t understand the tone she was getting back. “And I appreciated the rapid response and turnover. I sent you another email about four hours ago looking for it again. The first one had the wrong dates.”
“No, it didn’t,” Heather snapped.
“I doubled-checked my email to the attachment you submitted. It was the correct quarter, the wrong year.”
Heather was pounding on her keyboard and pulled it up. “It’s right here,” Heather said. “This is the report I saved and sent you.”
“That might be the report you saved, and the one I need, but not the one you sent in the email. If you go to that and pull it up, you’ll see. My email earlier explained that.”
“I haven’t read all my emails yet today. I’ve had other things to do.”
“I understand we are all busy. If I need to reach out to other staff for information when requested for Ethan, I can do that. Being new, I’m learning all the protocols. What is the normal turnaround time so that I can watch in the future?”
She heard a cough and laugh somewhere close by. There was a lot of silence as if everyone was listening in. She was trying her hardest not to be a bitch.
In order for her to do her job, she had to make sure she wasn’t walked all over either.
If she was wrong, she’d own up to it. She was, but only in that she didn’t catch the wrong report sent to her.
Heather looked up the email that was sent yesterday, Nora leaning over and pointing at the dates at the top to prove it was the previous year.
“Well, that’s on you,” Heather said. “You should have caught that right away and let me know.”
“It is on me,” she said. “And I asked for the correct ones hours ago. If you could please run them now I’d appreciate it. If not, maybe I can find someone else that can do it.”
Someone stood up next to Heather. “I’ve got it, Taylor, don’t be a suck up,” Heather snapped.
Taylor sat back down. Young and eager by the looks of it. Her flushed face reminded Nora of herself right out of college.
“Thank you,” Nora said. “I’ll just stand here to assure you send the correct one before I go back and get to work.”
That caused another chuckle, but she wasn’t mean, just covering her ass so she didn’t have to walk down again.
“It’s done,” Heather said through her clenched teeth. “Do you need anything else?”
“I’m good for now. Thank you.”
She turned to leave and heard Heather mumble to someone, “Maybe if they hired in house with someone who understood more that wouldn’t have happened.”
“Shh, Heather,” another voice said. “She could hear you.”
Nora kept walking with her back straight, smiled at Brenda on the way out and wished her a good evening, then went back to her desk to redo her report.
By six, she was done and had a raging headache. She planned on sending it to Ethan, but he’d left at four for another meeting and it’d be best if she let it go and looked it over one more time with fresh eyes.
She grabbed her purse and shut the light, then went to lock the door when she saw her father entering the hallway and making eye contact with her.
He looked around and nodded her back into her office.
She flipped the light and he came in and shut the door.
“I heard there was a ruckus in finance a few hours ago.”
“About what?” she asked.
“Some are saying you’re in over your head and one employee gave you a hard time. Don’t let people walk all over you.”
The last thing she needed was advice from him.
“I’m not, and I stayed professional. It was a minor mistake that I asked her to correct. I think she was embarrassed over it.”
“As she should be. Don’t you make mistakes like that or let people think you’re weak. They will swallow you up.”
“I can handle myself the way I know how. I got the report right away. It’s all good. Was there anything else?”
Her father looked unsure of himself. As if he shouldn’t have even come down to talk to her and she didn’t know why he did.
Unless he was worried that if it got back to anyone she was his daughter and couldn’t do her job it’d just be one more embarrassment to him.
She’d had enough of them in her life.
“No. Let me walk out first, then you can come out a minute later.”
There was no reason to argue. Standing there while he opened the door and walked out, she waited a minute, then followed. He was already in the elevator when she got to it and would just have to wait now for it to return to her floor.
Screw it, with the day she had, she needed the exercise and went for the stairs.
It’d help with the monster warm cookie she was going to treat herself to on the way home. Maybe she’d get two.