Page 3 of In Love and War
“Sorry… um, I think we’ll need to change the email address you have on file.”
“Andrew, could you please print out a copy of Miss Bloom’s schedule and duties and ensure we get the contact information corrected?”
“Absolutely. Milly, if you’d follow me, I’ll take you to your desk and we can get started.”
“And Ms. Bloom?” Zac finally looked up, capping the highlighter. “The interns here generally don’t address the associates by their first names.”
I followed Andrew out, thoroughly embarrassed.
“Rough start,” Andrew said as I sat down in my new chair. My desk was set up in the middle of the floor with three others in a square, all facing inward.
There were two offices on my left (the farther one of which belonged to Zac) and two on my right. “I wouldn’t sweat it too much though. He’s tough on everyone.” He took a seat at the desk facing mine.
According to the schedule he’d handed over, my day began at 6:00 a.m., not 8:00.
What the hell, why is he in so early?
“He really gets here at six every day?”
“Oh no.” Andrew waved his hand. “Hegets in at like five thirty. But the coffee shop downstairs he likes doesn’t open until six. Your job is to be there when the doors open, grab his order, and bring it up to him. He’s usually organized enough by the time you walk in that he’ll have your work for the day ready.”
“That’s… efficient. So then, what time does he leave?”
“He works twelve- to fourteen-hour days on average. I’ve only ever seen him leave early to entertain clients or attend events.” He had started typing away on his keyboard which I took as my cue that he needed to get back to work.
The schedule and information document was more comprehensive than I had been expecting. It took me almost an hour to go through.
3
“Nothing about this is what I was expecting. At all. I’m exhausted,” I yawned. I’d been tempted to skip the call and go straight to bed. But I’d canceled on Kai so frequently lately that the guilt was starting to build up.
I was drowning in work. Constantly. Zac went through proposals and presentations so quickly that they’d assigned a second intern, Mai, to help relieve some of my workload.
You’d think the quality of his work would at least suffer a little considering how quickly he came up with the material, but it didn’t. The guy was really,reallygood at his job. Everyone knew it. He was smart, hardworking, and fantastic with his clients. My father’s praises had been earned, that much was clear.
There was only one problem with him:he was a straight-up asshat.
The romanticized version of him that I’d built up in my head was gone. Now I was a nervous mess for all sorts of different reasons.
He was never happy with my work, no matter how hard I tried. And he was never nice about it either.
I’d lost count of the number of times I had to redo projects and edits that weren’t up to his impossible standards. Today I had gotten scolded for not following the proper tab organization methods he’d outline in a thirty-four page “Proposal Review Manual” he’d thrown on my desk on my third day and told me to memorize, earning me snickers from Andrew and Mai. I’d used blue instead of purple to mark the second edits of a proposal, and he’d acted like I’d run the document through a shredder and dipped it in tar before turning it in.
The guy was insane.
I knew I wasn’t the only one that didn’t like working with him either. My theory was that people were just too intimidated or scared to say anything. I’d seen one of the interns from the accounting department come out of his office visibly upset a few days ago. And apparently Mai had found her crying in the bathroom shortly after. She wasn’t even supposed to be working with him, so what the hell was his problem?
“You have no idea, Kai. He’s the spawn of Satan himself. If, you know, Satan was an insufferable, neurotic workaholic with a stick the size of Idaho up his ass,” I continued to vent over the phone, eight and a half weeks into the internship from hell. “And the job isso boring.I’m not doing anything of substance! Just filing and editing, over and over and over again. I’m not learning anything which was the whole point of this internship in the first place. It’s so frustrating.”
“Man, I gotta say, Mills, I had not been expecting this.” I could hear him munching on the other line. “And I thought I had it bad. My biggest problem today was unjamming the kitchen printer. Took me four hours.”
“Kai, can you stop with the licorice, please? I’ve seen how many empty packs you’ve got in your car. You seriously have a problem. Also, it’s very unpleasant to listen to on this end.” My patience was limited today.
“Hah, yeah sorry. You talk to your dad yet?”
“No,” I sighed, “I just don’t want him to think I can’t handle it, you know? Also, what exactly would I even say? ‘Hey, Pops, you know that guy you think so highly of that’s made you a bunch of money? Well, I’m here to tell you he ain’t it, sis. He works too hard, and his expectations are too high. Absolute garbage employee, on to the next one please.’”
Kai snorted.
