Page 18 of An Irresistible Force (Vancouver Vice)

Workingfor the Vice was like getting plopped straight into a case study at biz school. A case study about a company completely falling apart while the managers were completely clueless. And Greg and I were the clueless managers. Right now, I was looking at an organizational chart with my assistant, Nancy, in her cubicle.

“Let me get this straight, half the people listed don’t work here anymore?”

“Bingo! A stuffed animal for the lady in black,” Nancy agreed enthusiastically, her curls up and down. Everything about her was over the top. She had tons of red hair piled up in a style that made me think of poodles. Her clothing was always bright and colour-coordinated. She had an hourglass figure, and today she was dressed in a tight purple sweater with a deep V neckline and a pencil skirt in a blue and purple tweed. Fortunately her energy levels were also over the top. Unlike Brenda, Nancy was eager to share information and advice on what was going on here.

“Can I ask why everyone’s gone?” We seemed to be missing a lot of the titles that should have been reporting to me: communications and marketing, community programs, design, customer service.

She leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs. Her high-heeled pumps were purple suede. I needed to step up my colour-coordination game. “Duh, that’s pretty obvious once you’ve seen our financial statements. You have, right?”

“Yes.” Greg and I had spent our first two days going over that horror show. Our line of credit had been maxed out, and there was also a big loan that Uncle Thomas had forgotten to mention. This team was leaking money.

“Your uncle was trying to cut unnecessary expenses, but we were already pretty much down to the bone. So he had to cut salary.”

I sighed. That was a vicious circle though. If you cut out marketing and neglected the in-game experience, you were going to get less people at the games.

She blinked at me. Those eyelashes were definitely not real. The purple tips should have been my first clue. “To be fair, he didn’t completely cut the positions, he would give the titles to other people. Like me. I’m the office manager, the executive assistant to you, the customer service contact person, and the sales assistant. Oh, and I guess I’m Gregory’s E.A. now that, you know, Stella is gone.”

I nodded. Stella Laird was the former assistant who had filed the sexual harassment suit against my uncle. I changed the subject. “Well, just hearing all your job titles is making me tired. How do you do everything?”

Nancy smiled. “It’s no biggie. Like, if you have fewer customers, you have fewer complaints, right?”

I nodded and rose from the edge of her desk. There was a large photo collage on her wall. She had photos of all the Vice players, but there was one extra-large photo in the centre. It was a good-looking blond man who looked vaguely familiar. “Who is that?”

She looked at me like I had an extra head. “Good grief. Have you not been to a Vice game?”

“Ahhh, not yet.” I’d been meaning to go ever since the team got back from their road trip, but I had so much work here.

“That’s Eric Fairburn. He’s our new superstar—the leading scorer on the team. And as the marketing person, you should be promoting him. You know, I’ve seen hockey teams doing those photo shoots of players with no shirts! We should totally do that. I bet we would sell a ton of shirtless Eric Fairburn posters. I’d buy ten myself.”

“Well, that doesn’t seem right. I mean, I’m creating a sexual harassment policy for our company now. So, I can’t turn our players into, er, pin-up boys.”

“Oh please. Every single soul on the Vice has to hustle to promote this team. If God has blessed you with gifts like that—” She motioned towards Eric’s face. “It’s a bigger sin to let them go to waste. And you can’t even see his body from that photo.” She made a noise that was somewhere between purring and growling. It was a sound I had only heard my cat make before.

“Okay, I’ll think about it. Maybe we can compromise.”

Her curls bobbed cheerily in agreement. “One of those muscle shirts and a nice pair of worn-out Levis would be fine by me too.” Then she fixed her gaze on me. “You can’t tell me that you don’t find hockey players attractive.”

There was no way she could tell that I had once had feelings for Chris, could she? He had only worked here for three days. “Well, maybe in theory, but not in real life.”

“Uh huh.” She sounded dubious. “What’s in this sexual harassment policy anyway? You know, Amanda, people meet at work all the time. You get to know someone nice and start dating. My mom and dad met at work. So, I don’t understand how you can stop it happening with a policy.”

“Sexual harassment is not about consensual dating, it’s about power. For example, if a Zamboni driver were to ask you out, you would feel free to say no.”

She frowned. “Ian? Of course I’d say no. The guy’s about a hundred years old. He’s as wrinkled as an apple left in the keeper for too long. I bet even his dinkle has wrinkles.”

I shook my head to get that image out of my brain. “Good grief, stop. I don’t mean our actual Zamboni driver; this is all hypothetical. All I mean is that he can ask you out, and you don’t have to worry that about turning him down. But if your boss were to ask you out, you might feel you might have to go, because you could be fired.”

“No way! I told Brenda you weren’t gay. But she insisted that since you wear men’s suits and act like a guy, that you must be. Not that I have anything against all that. You know, k.d. lang is still one of my favourite singers. When she sangHallelujahat the Olympics, it was so beautiful I bawled like a baby. But I prefer sausage for breakfast myself, if you get what I mean.”

“Nancy, please stop leaping to conclusions. I’m not a lesbian, and I’m not actually asking you out. All I’m trying to do is give you an example of a power imbalance. Sexual harassment is when a person in power—male or female—uses that power to coerce sexual favours from an employee. Or even if someone’s comments make you feel uncomfortable at work.”

“Seems like common sense to me. You can ask out your boss, but your boss can’t ask you out, right?”

“In principle, but it’s more complicated than that.”

She waggled a finger at me. “One piece of advice—make it simple. When it comes to sex, people don’t think too much.”

“Okay. Will do.”

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