The Boss’s Terms
By Ernest Winchester
Copyright: 2010 By Ernest Winchester
The intercom gave a slight pop as it always did a second before her boss’s voice came through. “Miss Booth, come into my office, now!” There was an edge to his voice that Ruth had only heard occasionally in the year that she had worked as his secretary, after coming out of the secretarial pool the previous summer. The few times she had heard him take that tone was when he talked on the phone to some subordinate who had drawn his wrath.
“Yes, Mr. Hastings.” She released the intercom button and picked up her steno pad and grabbed a couple of pencils before rising and stepping toward the door to the inner office. A degree of apprehension gripped her as she opened the door and stepped in, but the stern look on his face nearly stopped her dead in her tracks. She took two more hesitant steps into the room before she noticed that the swivel chair where she usually sat to take dictation was not beside his desk Instead, it was over in the corner of the room near the windows, and at the same time she noticed that the window curtains were closed. It made the room darker than it normally would be so early in the morning. He usually only closed the curtains late in the day to block out the afternoon sun.
“Come forward!” He barked.
‘My God, what have I done?’ She thought, as her suddenly trembling legs barely supported her through the next several paces. Never had that tone been aimed at her.
“Do you know what this is?” Mr. Hastings was holding up a sheet of paper, shaking it in midair as if it were a gavel.
“Well, no, Mr. Hastings.” She couldn’t very well see anything on the paper at the distance she was from his desk, for his office was large and the half dozen steps she had taken only brought her to the middle of the room. She quaked at the thought of coming any closer.
“This is the letter to Amalgamated concerning the contract that our company has spent several months negotiating, the letter that I dictated and you typed yesterday afternoon.”
“Yes sir. Is there something wrong with it?” Ruth was proud of work, she was sure there shouldn’t be anything wrong with it to cause such anger as he was displaying.
“Oh, not much.” There was more than a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “Just one little word. The word ‘not’ seems to be missing. This letter was to inform the president of Amalgamated that we could not provide the services he wanted at the price he wished. If I hadn’t double checked it, it would have gone out and your fuck-up could have cost our company millions.”
Ruth shuddered at the impact of the curse word Mr. Hasting had used. She had never heard him utter anything like it before, even when chewing out other subordinates.
“I’m sorry Mr. Hastings. But at least you caught it.” She was trying desperately to put the mistake in prospective. At the same time, she bristled a little at her boss’s refusal to allow her to use a recorder when he dictated letters to her. She quickly opened the steno book, looking for the last letter he had dictated, the letter that he was waving in the air. She remembered wondering about the wording of the letter as he had dictated it, for she was aware of the ongoing negotiations with the client. Somehow it seemed to not set with what she had expected. She was sure she had typed it correctly.
“Never mind that! You fucked up, pure and simple.”
“I’m sorry.” Ruth stammered again, her voice fading. She slowly closed the steno book, though she desperately wanted to find the shorthand rendering of the letter.
“You do know that it’s time for your first annual evaluation since you’ve come into my office?”
Ruth felt the blood drain from her face. This was a very bad time for him to become so angry with her. Her work had always been exemplary, even when she languished in the steno pool for two years before becoming Mr. Hastings personal secretary. She couldn’t imagine how she could have made such a mistake. “Yes sir.” Her voice was quivering.
“So how do you think this should impact that evaluation?”
“Well sir, I would hope you would consider all the other work I’ve done. You always seemed to be pleased before.”
“Well, I’m not pleased at this moment.”
“Yes sir, I understand.”
“However, I do hate to ignore your previous work for me. I’m wondering if there isn’t some way we could overlook this one mistake, someway you could help me overcome my anger.” As he said that last sentence, he stared at her over his fingers as he pressed them together before his face. His features seemed to soften slightly as he stared at her.
The silence in the room made Ruth certain that her wildly beating heart could be heard over the distance between she and her boss. She desperately needed a good evaluation to enhance her job with the company. The raise that usually came with a good yearly evaluation would certainly help her meager budget. She and her mother lived together and her salary, plus her mother’s pension, barely covered their expenses.
Mr. Hastings slowly rose from his desk and as slowly walked around it to lean against the front of the highly polished mahaganony edifice, never taking his eyes off her.
He was tall and Ruth had often marveled at his stature. She was sure that he stood at least six-foot-three—easily the tallest man in the office. And she had often caught herself staring at him when she was sure his eyes were diverted. He was handsome enough to draw the eyes of any woman within view, as she had seen many times over the year she worked for him. She often sat outside his office door thinking about his physique. Daydreams that she had to constantly shove out of her mind, knowing that he was married.
As he stared at her, a slight smile turned the corners of his lips. “Are you willing to do what it might take to make me forget this letter?” He had picked up the letter and carried it around the desk with him.
“I’m not sure how I could do that.” Several things crossed her mind at that instant; none of which she liked. And a germ of a thought was growing within her mind.
“Oh, come now Miss Booth. I’ve caught you many times staring at my crotch. I know you would like to know what I’ve got in here. Would you like to see?”
Ruth felt her face flush as the suggestion Mr. Hastings was putting forth sank in. She also reddened at the revelation that she had been caught looking at his manhood. She had always been so sure that she had been guarded with her stolen glances.
He reached back to drop the letter on the desk behind him without breaking eye contact. “Now this letter can be thrown away and forgotten about if you agree to my terms.” His big hands moved in slow motion to his zipper and pulled it down. The smile on his face widened as he pulled out his cock. It was large, befitting a man of his size, and it was growing larger as he slowly pumped it with his right hand.
Ruth felt she was stuck in a movie running in slow motion as her eyes locked on the massive cock. She gulped hard as she became aware of how dry her mouth had become since walking into his office.
“Come on, Miss Booth, smile. I know you like what you see.”
Ruth forced a smile on her lips as she felt the steno book and pencils slip from her fingers.
“That’s much better. You’re so pretty when you smile. I’ve wondered for a long time how those lips would feel on my cock. Now come here, get on your knees and earn that good evaluation. And later we can discuss other terms.”
She stepped forward, a measured pace at a time, judging the distance. Forcing a wider smile, she said, “Drop your pants. I want to see it all.”
He chuckled softly as his hands moved to his belt and loosened it along with the button holding his fly closed. “That’s better. I knew we could come to terms. I love winning negotiations.”
There was a whisper of material against his skin as his pants dropped. Coins and keys jangled as his finely tailored slacks struck the carpet. He was wearing no underwear.
Ruth jerked her phone from her skirt pocket, taking only a split second to make sure the sight before her was fully in focus and properly cropped before clicking the picture. She turned and bolted for the door. As she yanked it open, she turned her head back just enough to see him desperately pulling his pants up. She wanted to pause long enough to grab her purse from her desk drawer but she was certain she didn’t have time. She was sure she could retrieve it when she cleaned out her personal items later.
She flung open the outer door, ran down the hall and around a corner to the bank of elevators, nearly knocking down the office runner coming down the hall with an armload of mail. He stared at her with wide, questioning eyes as she sprinted past. If Mr. Hastings was in hot pursuit, she hoped that seeing someone else in the hall would make him pause. She punched the button, desperately hoping that the mail boy had just gotten off and that the elevator would open immediately, but she was not so fortunate. Fearing that if it did open within the next few seconds, she might get trapped in it with her pursuer, she shoved open the exit door leading to the stairwell.
With no hesitation she started up, taking the stairs two at a time. She put three floors below her before becoming winded and paused, forcing her hard breathing through her open mouth, listening for the heavy thud of footfalls on the metal steps, echoing through the stairwell. If he guessed that she had taken the fire escape exit in a desperate means of fleeing, she hoped he might think she would head down instead of up. She glanced upward; trying to remember which floor she needed to get to.
Reaching the twenty-fifth floor, she peeked out, hoping to see no one in the hall. Finding it clear, she ran down the hallway to the room she was so desperate to reach. She paused only a second to confirm the lettering painted on the frosted glass. ‘Human resources.’ It read in block letters. It had been three years since she had entered that door for her first job interview.
She burst through the door and stood panting before the receptionist’s desk, drinking in enough air to blurt out, “I want to report a case of sexual harassment.”
The receptionist sat gaping at her as Ruth turned the phone still tightly grasped in her hand so that the seated woman could see the picture.
“Oh, my God! Mr. Hastings?”
Ruth Booth agreed to a two million dollar out of court settlement and moved with her mother to south Florida.
The unemployed Mr. Hastings’ divorce would take longer.