Page 45 of September
“Sure,” she replied and looked at Molly to see if Molly knew what was going on.
Molly gave her a confused expression, and Juliet tried to replay her work trip in her mind to see if something had gone wrong, getting her in trouble. She couldn’t think of anything as she followed him into his office and sat down.
“So, how was the trip?” he asked.
“Good. We lost two right off the bat, but the manager made a couple of calls to the people they interviewed prior, and he’s got two more coming in. They’ll join one of the new-hire classes since they missed the opening class.”
“Great. Great,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “So, I wanted to talk to you about October.”
“I haven’t finished the schedule for October yet. It’s a little complicated.”
“I went ahead and did it for you since I realized it’s a lot to expect when you’ve never had to do it before, and Jordana is not here to walk you through it. I’ve added the finished schedule to the team calendar.”
“Oh, okay. Thank you,” she said.
“I also needed to let you know that we had to let Andrew go. He’s no longer with the company as of about twenty minutes ago. I imagine Molly is being told that now, too. We had someone else in HR take care of the termination paperwork since Molly and Andrew have always been pretty close.”
“Andrew? What? Why?”
“He was close to Jordana, and he’s been making some comments and sending inappropriate emails around the company. He confirmed to us that he knew about the affair and was upset that Jordana got let go because of it. There’s more to it, but that’s the PG version of the story. Pretend I never told you that, please. Anyway, we had to part ways.”
Andrew was one of the other trainers who had been on Jordana’s team. Hewaspretty close to Jordana. They’d come from a previous company together where she’d been his boss there, too.Mollyand Andrewweren’tparticularly close, but they’d hung out a few times outside of work, so it was entirely possible that people at Southern had assumed they’d dated or were dating, since Molly being gay wasn’t widespread knowledge. She wasn’t in the closet, but she didn’t blast her sexuality around the office, either.
“So, what does this do to October?” she asked.
“Well, I got it to work, but it’ll be tight. You’ll have to do a store opening Monday through Wednesday, and then a sales class Thursday and Friday. You’ll drive Wednesday night. It’s like that pretty much the whole month.”
“Every week?” she asked.
“Yeah, sorry. I haven’t fully figured November out yet, but the first couple of weeks of that month will be the same. We’re going to find a replacement for Andrew, but that will take some time. Then, they’d have to go through their training. If someone from one of the stores gets the job, they won’t have to do the full ninety days of training. They can skip the two months in the store, but they would still have to do the one month in the roastery like you did.”
“So, I’m basically traveling a hundred percent of the time for at least the next few months?”
“I know. And I’m sorry. It’s the best I can do right now. On the weeks when you’re driving from place to place, I can probably get them to pay for a hotel for the weekends. That way, you wouldn’t have to come back here and drive back up. It would save you some drive time.”
“I can’t. I have a dog at home. If I’m going to be gone every week, I have to at least be home on the weekends.”
“Can someone take care of her for you?”
“I think she would just becometheirdog by then if I’m literally gone the whole time. Is this how it will always be? I know what you said about the job description, but I didn’t expect to be goneallthe time, especially right away like this.”
“I’m sorry. We didn’t know about the Andrew situation. It happened after, and we had no choice. He said some pretty explicit things to the VP of operations. Between you and me, I knew he and Jordana were very close, but now the gossip has started that they might have been more than just former colleagues and friends. He didn’t say that, and neither did she, but the way he reacted felt more like a jilted lover than an employee who lost his boss.”
“I get that. And I think I can figure out October, but I don’t know if I can do this much travel forever.”
“I understand. Once we get his replacement trained up, things will go back down to seventy-five percent at most, and there will be months where it’s only one week or two.”
Juliet nodded and said, “Okay. Well, I guess I should go take a look at the schedule and get my travel booked.”
“Yes. And thank you, Juliet.”
Juliet stood up, and without telling him that he was welcome, she left the office and discovered that Molly wasn’t at her desk when she arrived back at her own and was probably getting the same news that she’d just gotten. Juliet pulled up the team calendar on her computer and checked her October travel schedule. She would be a little all over the place, going north first, then south, and then northeast and southeast. It made no sense, but the classes would have been handled by her, Andrew, and Jordana, so if only one person was teaching them now, they had to adhere to the existing schedule since people were already enrolled in their classes, and having one person change their schedule was easier than hundreds of people having to do it.
“Did you hear about–”
“Yes. And because he’s, apparently, an idiot, I now have to be gone the entire month of October and most, if not all, of November,” she interrupted Molly when she walked over.
“Shit. Really?”
