Her Secret Santa - Miley Maine Page 0,6
but I was the only one there. I wondered how often these chairs were actually full of people, or even a fifth of the way full. How many people had to wait to speak with Tony? I imagined that a lot of people were always pitching him ideas for business or new products, and he had to meet with some of them at some point.
I waited… and I waited some more. I soon realized I had been waiting for fifteen minutes. It was five minutes past when we were scheduled to have our meeting. Ok…no biggie. The guy was pretty busy. He was probably often behind schedule. That was fine. I didn’t have anywhere else to be today. I was just nervous and excited. And I was still agitated over that shit with that other driver. I had never experienced true road rage before. I felt like I should post it all over my social media or something.
But no. That would not be right. If I was going to be working with one of the big boys of tech, Caplan Industries, then everything I did publicly was now through a filter, right? I’d read all about this in Forbes or perhaps Redbook…? I wasn’t sure. But it was common knowledge that these days employers scanned their employee’s social media or had someone scan for them and they could use anything that you said they didn’t agree with or that they didn’t feel a representative of their brand should be saying and they would show you the door.
It was a scary place. It made one’s brain start racking and churning trying to think of every idiotic thing you may have liked or posted or shared, or even commented on. That was crazy and a huge invasion of privacy in my opinion.
I checked the clock on my phone, but only briefly. I didn’t want to look like I was going to sit there and play around on my phone the whole time, not that the receptionist was paying any attention to me. She was ignoring me completely and working on painting her nails. Occasionally, she would answer the phone. What a bitch.
It was eight-twenty. Wow. He was really running behind. This was getting a little bit annoying. I’ve always had thin patience. I can’t stand to just wait around somewhere.
I stretched my legs out in front of me and sighed. I wanted to get up and walk around and observe the place around me. But I didn’t. I stayed put right where I was.
The time continued to drag on…and on… Soon, it was almost nine o’clock. I got up and decided to ask the receptionist a question. “Hey, can you remind him I’m still here. What’s going on?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “He knows you’re here. He is busy and will be with you shortly.”
My patience with this little twit was running thin. “How about you call back again?”
I glared into her eyes, so she knew I meant business. She sighed and made the call once again. “Jill, Julie Ashburne is still here.”
“It’s Ashby,” I corrected her.
She gritted her teeth quickly and then with annoyance in her voice said, “Julie Ashby is still here for that meeting…. ok...” She hung up the phone and looked up at me. “He will be with you shortly. We apologize for the delay.”
I groaned and sat back down. Was Tony making me wait on purpose? Was this some sort of a test, maybe? Or was he just that arrogant that he thought people would wait around for him until the end of time. Well, I was not any average person. I planned to give him a piece of my mind when I finally did sit down with him.
I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. I would not do any such thing, but I was very annoyed. I needed this job too much to do anything to risk it, and he knew that. It was precisely the reason why he felt justified in making me wait until he was ready for me. He probably did it all the time just on basic fucking principle.
The time ticked on for another twenty minutes before the receptionist got the phone call. She looked up at me and said, “Tony will see you now. Go on back.”
I took a deep breath and felt the fear returning. It was real now. It was show time.
3
Tony
I finished the phone call that I’d been on for the past hour and