Tales of Darkness & Sin - Pepper Winters Page 0,118
do know apologies. I know bad ones—like Brad from junior year trying to foist off the blame on me after he was caught getting a blowjob from another girl—and good ones. All I have to do is read over the email myself and make sure the client’s apology falls into the latter category. In fact, since she said he sent her a sample to follow, if I pull that from his sent emails, I might be able to handle this entirely by myself and get one thing off Ryan’s plate.
Satisfied with that plan, I log myself out of my temporary employee email and type in [email protected] instead. His password is on a slip of paper his old assistant wrote down and slipped into her desk. He didn’t tell me about it—I found it myself—but it stands to reason if she was allowed to access his work email, I should be, too.
The password works and a split second later I’m in. I go to the sent folder first to find Ryan’s emails to and from the client so I can catch myself up.
By the time I’ve finished and printed off the sample email he sent for reference, there’s a new email in the inbox. I mouse over to it, expecting to find an email from the client I just spoke to, but it’s something else. From an Aaron Elman—not a name I recognize from the client list. The subject line reads “Swanson” and the content simply reads, “Is he onboard?”
Evan Swanson? Has to be. I frown, wondering what they could be talking about. I shake off my curiosity—I’m not in here to snoop—and back out of the message.
Luckily, the apology email comes through a moment later. I read through it, but it’s bad. Rambling and mildly ranty, underhanded attempts to shirk responsibility, trying to avoid even mentioning what she’s apologizing for—all kinds of bad.
I don’t even bother consulting Ryan since it’s such a mess. I print out her email, grab a red pen, and brutalize the text. I leave helpful, upbeat comments about the structure and content, explaining that she needs to stop shying away from what happened and own it. An effective apology can only happen once you’ve acknowledged the mistake. I tell her what she needs to do step-by-step instead of sending her a lame template like Ryan did to take all the personalization out of her speech. She could be a president who got a blow job or “oops! There was a typo in that coupon we sent out” and the language would barely differ with what he sent her to model her long-winded apology after.
It’s probably not my place, but I want to talk to Ryan about this. If this is the template he’s sending out to other clients… I don’t want Dunbar Foster to look bad just because he’s overwrought and trying to half-ass his job with boilerplate templates instead of one-on-one attention. I know Dunbar Foster’s rates; we charge way too much for service like this.
I know Foster wouldn’t like it.
I don’t want to get Ryan in trouble just because he’s overwhelmed though, so I’ll talk to him instead of Foster.
At least, that’s my plan until I go back to the inbox and the “Swanson” message is gone. My gaze darts across the screen to the folders. There’s one for each of Ryan’s clients to keep everything organized, but when I click on Swanson, the email from that Aaron guy isn’t there.
Covertly, I glance over my shoulder into Ryan’s office. He’s still on the phone, but he’s moving the mouse, also focused on his computer monitor.
I refresh the inbox and one new email pops up, but not in the inbox. There’s a file folder labeled “fantasy football,” the only non work-related file folder. The new message is in that folder, so I click it.
None of these messages seem to be about fantasy football. Briefly skimming all the names and subject lines I see a lot from Aaron Elman, but there are others, too. Smaller clients of Dunbar Foster responding to a vague, “Have you thought more about what we talked about?” message Ryan sent them first.
That seems fishy. Why keep them in a dummy folder? The Swanson email is in this folder now so Ryan must have checked it and rerouted it after I read it. I click it again to see the new messages on the thread. Ryan answered back, “Not yet. I have to move carefully with him. It’s complicated. He likes Foster.”