Twenty-two minutes later, I had eight copies of the poorly edited presentation on Zac’s desk. I hadn’t even been able to get through 10 percent of the thing.
Now I was just sitting in my chair, feeling nauseated after having accepted my fate.
“Maybe you should have told him right away over text. He might be angrier now because he didn’t get a heads-up.”
She was right, but I hadn’t been thinking straight. “Are you seriously just saying this now, Mai? Where was this twenty minutes ago?”
She shrugged.
Before I could say anything else, the office door opened and I turned around to find Zac rushing in, his blazer in one hand and a coffee in the other.
It took me a second to register it was even him. His hair, which was usually styled perfectly, looked like a windblown mess on top of his head. Almost as if he’d run his hands through it a hundred times. His burgundy tie was loosened, the first two buttons of his light blue dress shirt were undone, his sleeves rolled up, and there were wrinkles on his shirt. Actual wrinkles.
Zackary Evans looked disheveled. Disheveled and exhausted.
“Good morning,” Andrew and Mai said in unison, and Zac nodded in acknowledgement before walking into his office and closing the door.
“Is… was he wearing the same clothes as yesterday?” Andrew leaned over his desk to whisper.
“See? I knew it. Something for sure must have happened. He didn’t say anything to you in his text, Milly?” Mai asked.
I shook my head. Maybe something had happened.
As Mai and Andrew started to theorize on what it could be, I sat in silence, drowning in my anxiety. It didn’t bode well for me that he was already in a bad mood.
“No, you know what, I know what it is. Same outfit, lack of sleep, bad mood… I bet you anything he was fighting with a girlfriend or something at her place all night. That’s got to be it.” Mai was confident.
Before Andrew could provide his take, Zac’s office door opened. He was holding one of the proposals in his right hand and looking at me.
“Did you print off the right copies for these? I asked for finalized versions.”
A few seconds of silence passed before I answered.
“No, um, those are the right copies…” I mumbled.
Andrew and Mai were all of a sudden incredibly interested in whatever was on their computer screens.
Zac just stood there, looking at me.
“This is the final version. You edited this,” he finally said with raised eyebrows as he held up the presentation in his hand, seemingly to make sure we were talking about the same stack of papers.
More silence as my mind raced, trying to figure out the best way to explain myself.
“I misread your original email and thought the meeting wasn’t until the ninth. So I hadn’t really started on it. I tried to get through as much as I could this morning…”
I could see from where I was sitting that his ears were turning red. Judging by the scowl he was now wearing, it was due to anger.
His grip tightened, wrinkling the pages in his hand. “You’re telling me this now?”
Mai, who was now pretending to be completely engrossed in a notebook on her desk, had been right. I should have just confessed to him right off the bat.
I looked down, not knowing what to say. Though it didn’t really matter. As soon as I looked away from him, Zac turned around and walked back into his office, closing the door loudly behind him.
No one else spoke for the next hour.
At a quarter to eleven, Zac came out looking much more put-together. His blazer was on, his tie straightened, and his hair styled.
He walked out empty-handed and without saying anything.
4
I’d aged ten years in the three hours Zac was gone. I’d tried to distract myself by working on other projects but couldn’t concentrate no matter what I did. This was definitely not over; I just didn’t know how bad it would be yet.
Before he came in, I received a text from him asking for me to wait in his office. I got up and did as I was told without responding, fully aware of the whispers that would start as soon as I left the room.
I only had to wait for a few minutes before the door opened again. Neither of us said anything until he walked over to his desk and sat down.
“How did it g—” I started, desperate to break the silence.
“This isn’t working out, Amelia,” he said before I finished asking my question. His hands were now clasped together on the table in front of him and his fingers intertwined as he leaned in. “You’re fired.”
What?
I was too shocked to speak, so I just sat there, gaping at him.
“Under normal circumstances we would have someone from security escort you out. However, due to your… position and relationship with Mr. Bloom, HR has agreed to allow you to pack up and leave on your own.”
“I don’t think you can actually fire me,” I almost laughed. All the stress and anxiety that had built up from that morning was finally reaching its boiling point.
Could he fire me?
“That is not correct. I can fire you, and I just did. HR can address any questions or concerns you may have. Fourth floor, ask for Remi.” He turned over to his computer and began logging on.
The asshole was dismissing me. Just like that. Who the fuck did he think he was to fire me from the company my family built?
“I know I missed a deadline, but it was clearly an accident. Human error happens. You can’t fire me based off of one mistake.”
“Your one mistake could have cost me one of the largest accounts we bid on this quarter, Amelia. You only had one job to do, and it wasn’t a difficult one. And you know what I haven’t heard from you this whole time? One apology.” He’d stopped typing and turned back to face me again. For the second time that day, I could see his ears slowly turning red.
“Okay, well I’m s—” I started, but he didn’t let me finish.
“You showed up late on your first day because you didn’t read the introductory email that was sent out. A regular intern could have been excused immediately based off of just that.” His voice was frustrated and angry.
“But you were given a second chance. Then a third chance when you mislabeled the Microviz files, costing us six hours of work. Then a fourth chance when you couldn’t keep up with the basic internship workload and we had to bring on Mai to help out. A fifth chance was given after you mismarked the JYPR proposal second edits and we had to spend almost an entire day reorganizing. Are you really going to ask for a sixth one in two months?”
And that’s what did it.
“Are you kidding? You have me filing folders and making edits to proposals and documents all day! I’ve been talking to my dad about this summer for years—I know what the internship was supposed to involve. The whole point of it was for me to start learning about marketing and advertising so I’m a little more prepared to come work here after I graduate. But all you’ve done since I started is give me the least engaging work and then nitpick and criticize every little thing that wasn’t done exactly how you wanted it. Even if your instructions hadn’t been clear enough in the first place. I’ve learned nothing from you in the last eight weeks!” I knew it wasn’t a good idea to get worked up, but it all started to spill out anyway.