"Hey, Heidi," Matt said, coming up beside me. He had a pink-and-blue plaid shirt under his navy blazer with a bow tie. With him, every day was more eclectic than the next.
"Hey, do you know what this announcement is about?" I asked as we walked to my cubicle. I rummaged through my purse and grabbed my phone. If this meeting was boring, I was going to need something to occupy my mind while I pretended to take notes.
"No idea. You?"
"Nope," I said, glancing down my nose at him.
I was already five foot seven without my heels on, and I made it a point to wear my heels into work. I liked to be as tall or taller than a lot of the guys on the team, so they couldn't look down their noses at me.
"Jim thinks someone is getting fired," he told me, trailing behind me, as I moved toward the conference room.
From the outside of it, I could tell that it was already crowded. Matt must have waited for me. He would follow me around a lot, like a lost puppy.
"Why would they bring everyone together to fire someone? Isn't that kind of personal?"
"Yeah, true. Maybe it's a new project or something."
"After we took over Tarman Corporation last year, I do not want to think about adding on another new project. I feel like we've finally caught up from how shitty they were."
Matt laughed and held the door open for me. "Yeah, definitely."
We stepped into the brightly lit conference room. It was full to the brim with men in cheap suits who just wanted to go on a coffee run. There were a few guys, like Matt, who were around my age, but most of them had been with the company long before Jensen took over. Those guys really did not think too fondly of women in engineering, even when I schooled their asses.
Or maybe because I did.
I wasn't sure. Nor did I particularly care.
As much as I detested the blatant sexism that ran rampant around the office, I was getting paid as much or more than my colleagues. Unless someone was sexually harassing me, I wasn't about to complain to the higher-ups that my colleagues were douche bags.
But that was neither here nor there. I was waiting to find out what the big announcement was, and I'd completely zoned out on Matt.
"What?" I asked, glancing back over to him with wide blue eyes. "Sorry, I missed what you said."
"Uh … I was seeing if you were free on Friday night."
Even though he was kind of short and wore strange clothing, he was a cute guy. He just … wasn't my type. Not that I would date him because of my number one rule-do not mix business and pleasure.
"Oh," I muttered. "That's sweet, Matt, but I'm kind of seeing someone."
Sort of true. If I considered date number three with Nick to be seeing someone. And it counted right now.
"Right. Totally. Of course," he said the tips of his ears going pink.
I gave him a smile that said, I'm sorry, and then faced the front of the room again. That was when Morgan Wright stepped into the conference room. It went from a loud buzzing to almost complete silence in a matter of seconds.
Morgan had that effect on people. She was two years younger than me, and we had cheered together in high school. But she had been bred for her position as a senior vice president of the company since birth. Some people said she ran the business even better than Jensen. It was clear to me that she enjoyed it more.
She commanded attention and respect, and these men, who gave it out so rarely, dished it to her in spades. It didn't matter what she was wearing or how she looked or how pretty she was-those things that men would never consider about other men but usually judged women on. What mattered with Morgan was that she was smart, loyal, fierce, motivated, and hardworking.
If she didn't know how to help you with your job, she would learn how to help you. She would go out to the construction sites. She would get her hands dirty if she had to. Morgan Wright was unstoppable.
"Thank you for convening here on such short notice this early in the morning. I'll make it brief, so you can go back to your coffee breaks," she said with a mischievous smile.
The men laughed at what wasn't exactly a joke. I loved how sarcastic Morgan could be without ever breaking character.
"I wanted to let you know that we have reorganized the company a bit, and we're adding a new level of management to this department that has been needed for some time."
A rumble of confusion followed that statement.
We needed better management? That was an odd thing to say.
Engineering and project teams along with a few smaller departments all reported directly to their supervisors, and the supervisors met with a team manager for the department. Then, the team managers reported up from there. The way things had worked had never been a problem before.