Hai stood up, clasped my hand, and looked directly into my eyes when he said, “I’ll spend my life making her happy, Piers.”
I smiled. “I know you will. Now, let’s get to this meeting.”
The meeting went well, considering.
Jasper arrived about halfway through, standing in the back looking worried.
I let him continue to worry as I finished up the meeting.
“Any questions about this month’s goals?” I asked.
The same damn hand that’d been popping up all morning, a young man I’d just promoted to manager of a store in South Dallas.
“What do you think about offering drinks in vending machines for the people that wait for their cars to be fixed?” he asked.
I didn’t remember his name.
“There’s coffee and a food vending machine,” I pointed out.
I had a man who stocked them all once every week, making sure that everything was available if they wanted it.
I didn’t do carbonated drinks, however, because I didn’t want to deal with the hassle. Those damn machines broke more than they worked.
“I have a lot of moms come to mine, and they always complain that there’s nothing for their kids to drink,” he said. “I’m just relaying issues I’ve had in the past with the customers over the last week.”
A week.
That’d been how long he’d been promoted.
I scrubbed at my face and said, “Tell you what, I’ll think about it.”
I wouldn’t think about it.
I disliked having drink machines to the point where I’d probably never have them again. But he didn’t need to know that.
“Anything else?” I asked.
The kid raised his hand again, but Hai did me a solid and told him to stop, we all wanted to leave.
It was true.
Just because they were here didn’t mean that they didn’t still have to put in a full workday.
Most of them had jobs that they scheduled, and they got paid by the job.
If they didn’t get those done, they didn’t get paid.
“Oh, sorry.” The kid winced.
I looked out over the crowd and said, “All right, class dismissed.”
They all filed out, taking boxes of donuts with them.
Japer walked out, too, but he didn’t go far.
He went to fix the truck that he’d been working on the day before.
I went to my area and got to work on my own project, but periodically looked up to watch Jasper work, trying to figure out what in the fuck I should say or do.
