Page 14 of Latte Girl
“But then Ludo came around and let us all knowyou’regame.”
His statement is enough to draw my attention from his calf stretchingroutine.
“Game?” Irepeat.
“Yeah.” He looks over his shoulders and then cups both his hands in front of his chest, making the universal sign forboobs.
“What di—” I start to ask, but then he starts doing jumping jacks and I find myself silenced by my own confusion over whether or not he can actually beforreal.
“So pumped for that meeting, boss! Sopumped!”
He heads toward the exit and I look back down at my lunch, suddenly not hungryanymore.
Two hours later, I’m finishing up a run-through of the overview I’ve prepared for the meeting. It’s an interactive, graphics based presentation that covers introductions and reviews the department’s goals. I put way more work into it than necessary, but I haven’t had many outlets for development and design work lately. My father has made sureofthat.
Members of my team start arriving in the meeting room, and they all seem to share Tod’s ‘pumped up’ attitude. I thought his enthusiasm had to be some sort of energy drink induced anomaly; seeing open displays of excitement at Knox Security is usually as rare as spotting a unicorn. As my team of employees assembles, though, I find myself facing a group of eight men staring up at me like frenzied footballer players waiting for a playoff speech from theircoach.
I start off with an even toned “Good afternoon, everyone,” and am met with a variety of greetings that range from “Afternoon, boss man!” to Tod’s exclamation of “Yeah! Jorda-saurausRex.”
My fears are confirmed when someone calls out, “Look out for the lady killer!” and everyone starts to nod andlaugh.
Not only am I now the head of a team of misogynists hand-picked by Ludo, the King of Chauvinism himself, but they also seem to have made me into some kind of womanizingmessiah.
I decide to put a stop to thingsrightaway.
Laughing along with them a bit to keep myself from coming off as too tense, I wave my hands in a ‘let’s settle down’ gesture and take a seat at the table, putting us all on the samelevel.
“Alright all you...guys. Let’s, uh,getreal.”
Buddying up with these people is turning out to be harder than Ithought.
“I think there might be some rumours going around the office, but I want you all to know that I take my job here very seriously and I expect you to do the same. Let’s beprofessionals.”
“Professional skirt chasers,” mutters a man who looks twice my age but has to be more, because how many decades has it been since anyone used the term ‘skirtchaser’?
I swear I’m going to put Ludo in the hospital before this dayisdone.
“Like I said, let’s be professionals. Please ignore whatever you might have heard going around the office. We’re here to talk about finance. So onthatnote—”
I begin my presentation, but the knowing smiles everyone is now exchanging makes it clear my point hasn’t gottenacross.
“Look,” I say, frustration getting the better of me, “I wasn’t going to get explicit about this, but anything you’ve heard about me and any woman in this buildingisn’ttrue.”
They all just keep smirking. The anger in me is about to reach boiling point when the oldest man in the room, the one who made the skirt chasing remark, cuts off the string of expletives I was about to let out and starts speaking with afatherlyair.
“Let the man speak now, boys. He’s right. We do have work to do. There’ll be plenty of time to compare notes on coochieslateron.”
I grip the folder in front of me so hard my hands shake as I fight the urge to tear it into shreds. Much like the rest of my life, this meeting is not going accordingtoplan.
