Steve

When I got in to work today, I noticed someone sitting in the alcove near my office. I had a feeling it was my assistant, Steve and I was excited to meet him.

“Steve?” I poked my head around the corner with a wide smile.

He stood up and shook my hand. Steve is really tall and has dark hair that was impeccably done. He was wearing a bright pink “I am not a Nugget” shirt with a yellow chick on it. I recognized it as a PETA slogan. This wasn’t concerning to me because our office has a fairly casual dress code and t-shirts or jeans aren’t a problem.

“It’s nice to finally meet you Faith, would you like me to get you some coffee?”

“That would be so great of you. Why don’t you grab yourself a cup too and meet me in my office?”

“Sure, cream and sugar?”

“Cream, please.”

I settled into my office and started getting things ready for Steve. I had made a list of things I wanted to talk to him about and had just gotten everything out when he walked in with two mugs of coffee. He handed one to me and sat down.

“Those are great shoes you’re wearing by the way. Are they real leather?”

“What? Oh…I don’t think so; I think they’re fake leather.” I said looking down at my black pumps, “Anyway, I think you should handle my schedule when it comes to meetings or interviews for potential employees and I think, if you’re interested you can help me work on our company policy guidelines. Veronica mentioned you were interested in HR work, so I thought I’d involve you as much as possible.”

I took a sip of my coffee and nearly spit it out, it tasted extremely strange, and not in a good way. Steve noticed my facial expression while I struggled to swallow.

“Is something wrong? You look ill.”

“I’m fine, this just tastes…a little off. Maybe the coffee maker isn’t working? I’ll have to get maintenance to look at it.”

“Mine tastes fine. You must not like soy.”

“Soy?”

“Well, I refuse to use anything but soy milk because milk is murder for cows, so when you asked for cream…”

“I see. I didn’t think we had soy milk in the break room.”

“I took the liberty of buying some and storing it in there for the office to use.”

I chose to move on, “Okay, well, do you think you’d be interested in doing some HR related work occasionally?”

“I’d love that. I think that would be an amazing opportunity for me.”

“Okay,” I said getting up and handing Steve my schedule for the next few weeks, “I’ve got to meet with Veronica and a few of the writers today, but if you could put my schedule into our calendar network and then give me access to it, I think that’ll be a good place to start.”

“Alright, I’m on it.”

With that, Steve left my office and went to go sit at his desk to immediately start working. I shook my head and laughed while I poured my coffee into one of the potted plants hanging above my file cabinets. It looks like I’ll be getting my own coffee in the mornings.