A Fresh Start; The Office

I cautiously knocked on the MD's door trying to judge the ratta-tap-tap somewhere between self assured and not too cocky. It was only my second day and I wanted to tread very carefully. My last encounter with the upper echelons of media power still smarted; I wanted to get this right. The MD had requested my presence in his office and it was an encounter I wanted to go as smoothly as possible this early in my employment.

A deep voice commanded through the door.

"Enter."

I opened the door.

"Ah Alan - our new runner, take a seat."

I already knew a lot about Stephen, the boss. The facility grapevine had fed me some gossip and the tragic story of recent events pretty much as soon as I was through the door on my first day.

Stephen had recently come out of the other side of a a particularly bitter divorce, with his wife pretty much taking the denim shirt of his back and giving only fleeting monthly meetings with his children for the foreseeable future. It was only by employing the talents of a divorce lawyer so expensive and talented (he would have even made Heather Mills shit it), that he kept hold of the facilities house from the clutches of his ex-wife. Stephen apparently didn't really have a leg to stand on in most of the proceedings (absolutely no pun intended relating to the previous paragraph!); there would have been many evenings when he could have gotten away with receiving a blow job from a Soho rent boy in his office, but alas for Stephen the night of the company Christmas party his wife had organised was not one of them.

Although caught trousers down, Stephen had aparently been devastated by the breakup. Thrown out of the family home, he spent two months sleeping in his office watching his wedding video on a loop and listening to Coldplay and Dido albums. Now he seemed to be getting himself back on track, and has bought himself a bachelor pad in Vauxhall.

He sat the other side of the desk and stared at me as though examining the like of which he had not encountered before. Stephen was cut from a different cloth than the posing prick who owned the last place I worked. He seemed a bit more old school; clad in the fifty-somethings uniform of head to toe denim, widely know as 'The Clarkson' in fashion circles. Eventually with a theaatrical flourish he began.

"I've already heard good things about you Alan. Keep it up and you could go far here. There are only two things you really need to remember...... one there are no glass ceilings here.... and two...... I like my coffee black, strong and no sugar, none of these poncey frappa-latte things."

And with that he wished me luck and motioned me out of his office. Not bad I think, I got out of that one alive. Must remember how he likes his coffee though. Strong and black, that's easy enough...........

As according to the office rumour, its how he likes his men as well!