Page 73 of Shadow

She sighed. “Yes, Daddy. I promise. Two hours.”

He waved. “Go. I’ll be here doing… spy shit as you call it.”

She giggled and grabbed her purse before he could change his mind.

On top of meeting with Niki and Fiona to sort out their issues, the contractor was coming to give her an updated estimate. The fact that he wanted to deliver it in person was really bad or really good for her bank account, and somehow, she doubted it was the latter.

At the bar, things were more tense than she expected between Niki and Fiona. It looked like she’d arrived just in time to stop an all-out fight.

“What’s the trouble, ladies?”

“Fiona cut four people last night because it was slow, but they were all my people.”

“It’s not fair to cut my people when my people are my priority,” Fiona insisted.

Olivia picked up the tablet sitting between them and swiped until she could see last night’s numbers.

“First, based on these numbers you should have cut two people at most. Second, Niki is right. You shouldn’t be automatically cutting her people. I’ve already told you not to worry about labor overhead for the next month. Our numbers are going to be way off, and that’s fine.”

Fiona huffed. “It’s not fine. Niki’s people aren’t trained well enough, and they’re fucking everything up.”

She raised an eyebrow. This kind of outburst was out of character for Fiona, and she wasn’t quite sure where to start in order to get to the bottom of it. Olivia was friendly with her employees, especially her management team, but she also didn’t have trouble setting boundaries and expectations.

“That’s enough of that. Niki has a great team. And yes, they have a few different practices over at Olivia’s, but it’s your job to help them acclimate to how you do things here. Do I need to step in and take over scheduling, or can you handle this like adults?”

Fiona rolled her eyes. “It’s fine. We’ll handle it. But we do have too many people on this schedule.”

“Come up with creative solutions to put the extra people to use. I’m not letting them go without a paycheck. I’m trusting you to do your job as the manager. But I’ll help you brainstorm ideas. For example, we’ve been talking about doing trivia nights for a while now. I’m sure a good trivia night would take an extra couple of hands to run, and Niki has some outgoing people on her staff who would be perfect to run it.”

Fiona sighed. “Fine. But let Niki be in charge of that. I have enough on my plate.”

Olivia put a hand on her shoulder, but Fiona shrugged it away, so she stepped back. “So much that you decided to take a vacation without following protocol?”

Fiona’s eyes flashed with something fierce that Olivia didn’t quite recognize then said, “My vacation request must have gotten caught in your spam filter because I definitely sent it.”

Olivia wasn’t prepared to argue with her, so she steered the conversation back to the matter at hand. “I understand that you already do a lot here, but I’m asking you to work with Niki on things like the trivia night. Not pass it entirely to her.”

Niki had remained quiet until that point. She flashed a bright smile, and said, “I don’t mind taking the lead on a trivia night. I’ve been meaning to try something like that at Olivia’s, too.”

Olivia smiled. “Thank you. Now I need to meet with the contractor and get out of here, but you have my number, and we can chat remotely the rest of the week if you need me.”

“What’s with the remote conversations, anyway?” Niki asked.

Olivia waved a dismissive hand. “It’s complicated. But hopefully I’ll be back to visiting both bars in person regularly very soon.”

She excused herself again, and the two managers huddled over the tablet to discuss the upcoming schedule while Olivia turned to talk to the contractor, who was waiting patiently in a booth for her.

“Thanks for waiting, Mark.”

He nodded. “Of course, Ms. Harrigan. You’re good at getting people to work together.”

She smiled. “It’s my superpower. Now, what’s this update you have for me?”

He grimaced. “There’s a lot more electrical and plumbing damage than we thought. So, it’s going to be probably an extra ten thousand to get you back in working order.”

Olivia winced and took the estimate worksheet he handed her.

“That’s a pretty big jump. Do you mind if I look this over?”

---