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Jeff was sitting in the break room, eating his lunch, when he heard the explosion in Hannah's office.
-Wow-, he thought, -she's really going to town-
As he'd expected, Hannah had been playing least in sight all day, but the few times he'd seen her, she'd been almost aggressively addressing people by their surnames.
It looked, however, like the dam had finally burst.
“You STUPID cow”, Hannah raged through the wall, “what the HELL were you thinking”? “You know what?”
“ I don't even care. Get your ass OUT of my office NOW”
As the rant ended, Hannah's office door opened, and Melody dashed out. Blonde, sturdily built and only about five feet tall, she dashed towards the stairs, her fist clenched in front of her face, as if she was holding back tears.
Jeff immediately felt like a heel. It was his fault that Hannah had unloaded on Melody like that. He'd set her the task that had wound her up and he'd done it, knowing that it would wind her up. In fact, that had been his goal.
Without another thought, he dashed for the stairs, catching Melody around the second floor.
"Melody", he said, when she'd stopped. "I overheard some of that....spray. What happened"
Melody looked at him, clearly fighting for composure.
"I missed a deadline", Melody began, "I told her three d..days ago that I was having trouble, and...and she promised me help, but never got anyone to help me".
Jeff listened, a compassionate look on his face, but inside, he was seething.
While he was responsible for turning up the dial on Hannah's Bitch'o'meter, she should have arranged for some help for Melody, who was a recent university graduate with very little experience.
"Come on", he said, gently, "let's go grab a coffee and you can tell me all about it"
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**1 hour later**
Jeff marched into Hannah's office.
"Hannah, I need to speak with you"
Hannah looked up, the anger still very much evident on her face, as she spat,
"What do you want, Mr Gold?. I have a lot of work to redo before the end of the day, after Melody's mistake. I don’t really have time right now".
Jeff paused for a second to marvel that she could fulfill his order to address employees by their surname and STILL invest it with a full measure of scorn.
His own temper had been doing a slow boil since he'd spoken to Melody, and no small amount of guilt had been stoking it.
HIs temper snapping, Jeff slapped his hand on the desk, noting, in that absent minded way, that Hannah was clearly not wearing a bra, and met her icy eyes with his own brown ones, lit from within with the fire of his anger.
"Melody was crying her eyes out in the stairwell for fifteen minutes, Hannah. Half the office heard what you yelled at her, and the other half has heard it by now. Three people have already tried to get her to log a complaint with HR, and I barely talked her out of quitting. You need to fix this. Now."
Jeff realised, somewhat belatedly, that his voice and tone, harsh and angry at the beginning of his little speech, had slowed, and taken on that tone of command he recognised from nights at the fetish clubs.
The ice in Hannah's eyes had hardened further, when he slammed his hand on the desk, but, by the time it had finished, she was pressed back in her seat, her face had softened, and her nipples had made two small tents in her light blue blouse.
With a monumental effort of will, Jeff pulled himself back into the corporate drone headspace he'd assumed every day for the last two years and stepped back from the precipice.
"I...I'm sorry", Hannah stammered, "but, this work is so important, and Melody *knew* that..."
"This is NOT her fault, Hannah", Jeff cut her off, "You were in charge and you should have checked her work a week ago, or gotten one of us to.
You need to apologise to her, publicly, and fix this".
At that, Hannah started forward, shock and fear overriding her momentary submission.
"I will NOT..." she began to say, when Jeff cut her off again.
"You will", he said, his voice iron hard, "or I'll go to HR myself. Your call".
With that, Jeff turned on his heel and walked out of her office, feeling all the eyes on him, as he walked to his desk.
Five minutes after Jeff resumed his seat, Hannah's office door quietly opened and her face, still subdued, peeked out.
"Melody", she called, clearly, but with a slight quiver in it, "Can I speak to you, please?"
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