The Boss
Authors: Rick Bennette
The Boss
Rick Bennette
The Boss
All Rights Reserved
Copyright © 2012 Rick Bennette
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We All Have a Secret Desire to
Turn the Tables On Our Boss.
by
Rick Bennette
copyright 2012 by R. D. Bennette, all rights reserved
You may not copy or post this book in any manner.
ISBN
978-1-105-64184-8
Published by RickBennette.com
Dedicated to Denise, the love of my life.
Every day millions of people wake up and trade their most precious commodity, time, for the almighty dollar. They battle traffic getting to work only to face another battle with a boss who has more attitude than knowledge. It’s hardly a secret what most of us would love to tell our boss.
In order to keep food on our tables, most of us make the common sense decision to suck it up day after day.
What if you could tell your boss exactly what’s on your mind? What if the tables could somehow be turned to make your boss answer to you?
“The Boss” is the story of every employee’s secret wish.
This Monday starts off my work week pretty much the same as every other week. The alarm goes off at 5:44 AM. I’m a night owl, so I roll around a bit before getting out of bed. Only this time, I’m so tired from a late Sunday night party, I fall back to sleep.
Another twenty minutes pass before I spring to life again. Stumbling out of bed, I guide myself down the hallway using my arms against the wall to keep myself from tipping over before I reach the shower. My brain doesn’t even become cognoscente of my surroundings until that hot water runs through my hair.
I’m nothing without breakfast, and twenty minutes behind schedule or not, I refuse to give up my morning ritual of OJ and poached eggs. This time I set the eggs to poach as I get dressed, skimming a valuable three minutes off my missing twenty. A few more moves of efficiency like this and I might only be ten minutes late arriving to my office.
I barely make the first traffic light green, but hey, I manage to shave off another two minutes not waiting at that intersection.
All I can think of is Abbey. She’s my boss. She has been for seven years. In all that time, other than work related conversation, I don’t think we’ve spoken to each other more than five minutes. It’s a shame, really, because she’s rather an attractive woman. At least on the outside. She’s thirty something and never been married. No surprise there, considering every man she’s dated since I’ve been working for her has refused to ask her out a second time. How do I know this? My best friend at work fills me in on the scoop. Not because I really care about Abbey, but because it allows me to better accept her superiority complex knowing I have at least one thing she doesn’t. Friends.
Thank God for Erika. Without her, I’d know nothing about Abbey. In which case I might be envious of my boss for her looks, her money, and the presumption that she is so desirable, every man is after her. I would think she could pick and choose the men she would take home for, well, whatever women do with men after hours in the privacy of their own domain. Not Abbey, though. One date with her is enough to scare away the most desperate of men. And I wouldn’t know any of this if not for Erika.
Along with a dozen other employees, we work for Abbey’s small publishing company. A little over seven years ago her father passed away, leaving Abbey his beloved family business. I answered the help wanted ad Abbey placed in the local newspaper when she needed someone to show her how to run the business. The ad didn’t quite say it that way, of course, but within five minutes of the interview, I knew Abbey had no clue how to run her new business. I knew how to run it though, and I’d like to think she hired me because of my knowledge. I soon found out I was wrong.
Abbey didn’t know how much I could help her business when she hired me. She just hadn’t placed the ad online as everyone else does. In our little town rag of a newspaper, the only other contact with her ad was probably a bird dropping. Good luck for me, of course. Without the competition of fifty other applicants, I got the job. I put my talents to work right away building upon her father’s sterling reputation.
Eventually, even Abbey learns the business from following my actions. She is quick to take over any aspect of the business as soon as she learns it, freeing me of any due credit for helping her put to use her new found knowledge. In seven years, I hear her say thank-you to the waitress at the cafe down the street more times than she ever says it to me. In fact, I can’t even recall the last time she thanked me for anything. That’s OK, though, because I receive my one half percent raise every year regardless of what I do. On Christmas, there is always the well received bonus of a ten pound turkey. I’ve seen chickens bigger than this.
I manage to arrive at work only thirteen minutes late, meaning my new measures of efficiency had clipped off seven minutes from my normal prep and travel time. I might use them on a regular basis, and who knows, it might end up saving eight minutes some days. Not too shabby. Not good enough, though, because my truly unhappy-go-lucky boss is waiting for me at the front door with her proverbial broomstick tucked between her legs. Had I been able to locate a real broom, and were I to become suddenly independently wealthy, the temptation to place the real one under her would be a temptation I would not be able to resist.
“Where on Earth have you been?”
“Let’s see, took a right out of my driveway, traveled south on -”
“- Never mind. I hope you didn’t forget about our flight to the Bahamas. I have a plane waiting for us at the airport.”
“Of course I forgot. It’s Monday, isn’t it? I hope you got a twin engine this time. Over water flights in a single, well, that just doesn’t show me that your genius switch is turned on.”
“I guess you never heard of something called a budget?”
“Guess you never heard of something called insanity? Oh, wait. I might be wrong on that one.”
“Let’s just get going. The meeting is in two hours, and I want to arrive early.”
Abbey learned early on that my greatest hobby of all time is flying. I’m not independently wealthy. My half percent raise only cuts into the seven percent cost of living just a tad. I’m sure most of you get the picture. Flight time is expensive in my financial bracket. So whenever the witch needs a ride, I can rack up a few free hours of left seat time in the old Cessna acting as her mechanical flying broom.
Our little publishing business successfully fills a market niche, but let’s just say we’re never going to give Random House a run for their money. Still, it’s a job, and one I rather like. One I’d like a whole lot more if not for Abbey. Still, moody as she is, and that’s all the time, she’s easy on the eyes. And she doesn’t smoke. That counts as two pluses in my book.
Abbey and I fly from venue to venue giving seminars to would be authors on how best to market their books. Almost no one else in the business does this, so she’s well sought after for these seminars. Poor saps are under the impression we’re going to make them millions on their manuscripts, but rarely do we find one worth publishing. Abbey collects several thousand dollars per venue, so it’s something we do as often as we can. Which, did I mention, is great for logging free hours of flight time. Forget that Abbey saves hundreds of dollars a week not having to actually pay a commercial pilot. She gets my service at no additional cost over and above my already meager salary.
We arrive at the county airport early enough to get a prime parking space. Not only do I fly her around, I have to drive her, too. At least we use her car, which is worlds nicer than mine. She’s probably too embarrassed to be seen in my car. Works for me. I save the gas money.
The flight crew has topped of the Cessna as I requested. Because I know the guys so well, they always reserve the best plane for me. It’s the only 172 on the field with air conditioning. Abbey wonders why we can’t run the AC during take off. She doesn’t know that the little Cessna barely gets off the ground as it is, and running the AC on climb out would add a few hundred feet to our roll down the runway and trim our climb rate substantially.
Abbey just sits there numb as a tooth being drilled, as I in my momentary glory pilot the Cessna down the runway and into the sky. It is the best part of my job, even though I know I’m being taken advantage of by Abbey for my piloting skills. If she knew how much I loved these moments in the sky, I am sure she would make me pay
her
for each flight.
Crabby bitch or not, when I arrive at the airport as pilot in command with a good looking lady in tow, it makes a good impression. The ground crew has no idea she’s just my boss. I do all the talking there, as Abbey simply avoids dealing with common workers as much as she can. She has no idea how much of life she is missing by not sharing experiences with people from all walks of life.
Our in-flight meal today is a shared package of red Twizzlers. Our in-flight entertainment is, well for me anyway, looking at her every now and then and then looking out the window. For safety reasons, I have chosen to fly at a higher than normal altitude. Today I will approach the Bahamas taking the slightly longer route passing over the first island of Bimini rather simply flying over water the entire time. Because I choose this route, there’s only a five minute segment of the flight when I can’t glide to land in the event of an engine malfunction. The Cessna will glide fairly well without power, but it can’t go on forever without the spinning propeller pulling us behind it.
Just as I’m about to come out of that five minute segment where my glide ratio won’t make land, the engine sputters. My mind runs the routine I’ve practiced for just such an instance. In rapid succession I check my throttle, fuel gauge, fuel mixture, tank selector and the ground below. It is to no avail, because seconds later, the engine ceases to provide thrust to that ever loving propeller up front. It is left to free-spin only by the rush of wind rushing toward us as our nose dips down. It now acts as an air brake as we gently descend in altitude. Abbey looks on in horror, as it is obvious she thinks we are going to fall out of the sky like a ceramic statue off the fireplace mantle when the maid has been a little too careless with her feather duster.
Abbey squeals like a spoiled school girl, “Jake, we’re gonna die! Oh, my ever loving Lord, we’re not gonna live to see -”
“- We’re gonna be OK, Abbey. I have it under control.”
“How can we be OK? The engine stopped. Start it up again!”
I reach for the radio to call in a mayday, but Abbey keeps yelling that we’re going to die. As I attempt to dial in the unicom emergency frequency, I realize we have no electrical power. The mayday call isn’t going to happen. I say it anyway to make Abbey think help will follow. But we are truly on our own. With Abbey destroying my concentration, I attempt to trim the airplane’s flight controls to get as close to that first small island as we can. I beg her to calm down. I do my best to reassure her we’ll survive.
“Look Abbey. We’ve been flying under full control for a minute now since the engine quit. We’re gonna make it. Please, I beg you, let me concentrate on flying and be quiet for once in your life.”
“My God, how dare you speak to me that way,” she says with a tone of authority.
“I’m pilot in command. It’s my ship. Right here and now, I’m the boss. So sit down and be quiet so I can fly.”
“You obviously have no idea what’s is store for you when I -”
“- Abbey, shut the hell up already!”
With that, Abbey is stunned long enough by my failing to acknowledge her as my authority figure for the first time in the seven years we have known each other. Now I can finally concentrate on the best approach angle so we can make the beach. She stares silently at me, maybe out of shock or maybe out of fear. I don’t really care why, but it’s a good thing.
I realize we’re barely going to make the north end of Bimini Island, the closet island to the Florida coast. The south side of the island is populated and has a landing strip, but there’s no hope of gliding that far. The beach on the north end is too slim to land the plane, and so I make the decision to pitch it into the water just about twenty feet off the beach. It will be a soft water landing, so there won’t be any possibility of fire. The worst we’ll have to do is swim a little. I calculate my approach and hold off using flaps until the last minute. I want clean wings to get me as close to the beach as possible. A half mile out I pull in a full 30 degrees of flaps, slowing the plane down. I pull the yoke back to raise the nose, riding the stall horn as it buzzes almost continuously, signaling we are at the minimum flyable airspeed of just under 50 miles an hour. I force the tail to strike the water first to avoid a nose-over landing. The plane pitches abruptly forward as the main wheels grab the water, stopping our flight almost instantaneously. The plane settles into the water wing side up as Abbey once again resumes her position as chief squealer.
“Oh my God, Jake, now we’re gonna drown!”
“We’re not gonna drown, Abbey. We’re only in six feet of water. The beach is right there.”
The plane settles to the bottom as we scramble to get out. I undo Abbey’s safety harness as we pitch our faces upward to the the top of the cabin for breathable air. She finally stops squealing when the plane ceases to sink any further. I open her door and nudge her out, secretly wishing it wasn’t against the law to have done this in flight.
The north end of Bimini is like an uninhabited tropical island. Abbey doesn’t know that just a few miles south is a small town. I don’t see any boats nearby, and it doesn’t appear that anyone saw us come down. The cool, cloudy day wasn’t the best for boating. As far as I can tell, we’re on our own.
Now I know in less than an hour, I could walk south on the island and find help. But Abbey doesn’t know this. It’s a secret wish of almost every red blooded male to be stranded on a deserted island with a beautiful woman. This is as close as I’ll probably ever get. I’m going to make the best of this opportunity.
Out here, Abbey has no authority over me. She is totally dependent upon me for her survival, or at least she thinks she is. Being the stubborn woman she is, she probably won’t admit that. She will battle with me every step of the way to regain control of the situation. I’m not going to allow her to have her way this time. For some unknown repressed reason, I want to see if I can tame this shrew and maybe even find a heart somewhere beneath that dripping wet thousand dollar outfit.
Abbey and I make it to the beach. Although it’s a short walk to the beach, it takes so much energy out of me. Maybe it’s because of the mental stress of dealing with Abbey, or maybe dealing with the emergency procedure took the wind out of me. Whatever reason, I’m beat. Abbey, on the other hand, has somehow managed to save her handbag from getting wet. I didn’t notice how she was able to do that as the plane was filling up with water because I had better things to worry about. But here she is, walking to the beach holding her handbag high in the air and out of the water. I throw my soaking wet windbreaker onto the beach.