They had, but Lorna knew what her team was capable of. She drew a shallow breath. “Did... did something happen at the sales team meeting yesterday?” she asked. “I mean, I know what happened, I was there, but was someone... offended?”Again?she whispered in her head.
Deb didn’t say anything but emitted another weary sigh.
There was a fine line between assertive and mean, and Lorna had missed the line a couple of times. “I admit, I was a little annoyed that they hadn’t met this month’s threshold.” And she did say something that she knew was bad, but in her defense, she had not directed it at any one person. It had been more of a collective slander. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t call any one individual a moron,” Lorna said quickly. “I said it was like working with a bunch of morons. I didn’t mean to insult them, Deb. I was just trying to be funny and make a point.”
Deb looked dubious.
“Millennials, man, am I right?”
“You’re a millennial, Lorna.”
Right. She kept forgetting that.
“I didn’t call you in here to talk about the sales team meeting, although this admission doesn’t help your case.”
Hercase? Well, that tipped her right into a small eddy of anger. Hercaseshould be ironclad. She was the top salesperson at this firm. She pushed them, but it wasn’t like there was no reward for that push. The more sales, the more money they all made. She frowned, trying to think of what she had done wrong so she could fix it. That’s what she did—she fixed things, set everythingto rights. Then she went home to her small apartment and ate frozen dinners and talked to her dog and fumed like any working woman in this country would do.Think.“The AutoZone account,” she said, sitting up. That had to be it. “I had the team stay late last week to get the specs out quicker.”
“On the promise of pizza. Which you didn’t order until eight o’clock. People have lives outside of work, you know.”
Unfortunately, she didn’t really know. “I’m so sorry. I was attempting positive motivation.” She’d read all about it in her book about hitting a million in sales.
“It’s not positive when they don’t actually get the pizza until well into the night.”
“I’ll make amends to the team.”
“I hope you do. But that’s not—”
“Please don’t say it’s Franklin Industries,” Lorna blurted. She had everything riding on that account. Her promotion. Her bonus. Her raise. Her house.
Deb cocked her head to the side. “Are you okay?” She leaned closer to place her hand on top of Lorna’s, which, Lorna suddenly realized, was curled into a tight fist.
“What? I’m fine.”
“But it looks like you’re crying.” Deb gestured to Lorna’s face.
Damn it.She really needed to see a doctor because her eyes had recently started leaking all the time. “No, no.” Lorna grabbed a tissue from a box on the table. “Everything is fine.”Probably.“It’s allergies.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.” She dabbed at her face.
“Okay,” Deb said, sounding uncertain. “I was trying to say that the problem we are having is you.”
More leaks. Lorna dabbed harder at her face. “Me? That’s crazy. I’m fine.”
“What about the email attachment?”
Lorna paused while her brain sorted through a dozen email attachments she’d sent recently. She found nothing offensive. “Pardon?”
“The email attachment in which you... expressed some thoughts.”
She’d expressed some thoughts? What was wrong with that? Her thoughts were pretty basic and mostly about work. Or instructing others to work. Or what was for dinner, or when she could walk her dog, or what the guy who lived above her was doing at 10:00 p.m. on a Tuesday that sounded like a flash mob rehearsal. But she hadn’t put any of that in an email.
“Oh dear,” Deb said. “You don’t know.”
“I don’t know anything,” Lorna admitted.
Deb sighed heavily again. She reached for a plain blue folder on the table and drew it toward her. She opened it, flipped through a couple of pages, found what she was looking for, and slid the paper across to Lorna.
