I hate it here
He threw his laptop at the wall and it fell to the floor with a sickening crash. Joanne Adler looked up at him with tears in her dark eyes.
''You're so stupid!'' He shouted as he stormed out of the office, not even bothering to put on his coat that was draped on the chair. Joanne looked down at the ruined Apple MacBook. It must have been worth several hundred dollars and there it was, laid on the ground, ruined. Apple was known for making great products so the fact that the laptop was ruined was very concerning. She sniffled and picked up the remnants of the laptop and put it into the trash. The door swung wide open and Gina Fitzgerald hurried into the office.
It truly was a beautiful office. The picture windows afforded a beautiful view of the city. The streets down below showed cars of every color whizzing past. They looked like little beetles scurrying away from a threat. It was pristine and white, symbolizing purity. Mr. Claude Frederickson was anything but pure. Rumors had it that he slept with all his female employees. So far, Joanne was the only person that he hadn't slept with. She had just started two weeks ago and was already thinking of resigning.
Claude was unbelievably mean. He was the meanest man that had ever stepped foot on the earth. It was hard to imagine him as a baby. He seemed to have just sprouted up out of the ground as a 45 year old man. His olive skin was smooth and his hair was with black with a few white strands running up the sides of his head. He kept his beard and mustache neatly trimmed and was always seen in expensive black suits. The color of the suits matched his eyes, dark and disdainful. All of this was frightening for 19 year old Joanne who had started there.
"What did you do?" Gina asked as she helped Joanne into one of the soft sofas in the corner of the office. Claude had warned her to never sit on that sofa because it was expensive. He acted as if her poverty was a disease. Everybody in the office treated Joanne like crap and she was slowly reaching the end of her rope.
"I didn't do anything!" Joanne exclaimed in frustration, wiping tears away from her eyes. "It was his own stupid fault."
Gina was used to these outbursts and she rubbed Joanne's back consolingly. "Deep breaths, tell me what happened."
Joanne looked up, willing the tears to go away. There was a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room. Who the hell puts a chandelier in their office? "He was mad that I didn't upload the files of the mining project to his laptop. He called me into his office and asked me to look for it and when I told him I couldn't find it..." Joanne burst into tears and Gina smiled in understanding and rubbed her back gently.
"Do you want some water?" Gina asked softly, pushing Joanne's bangs out of her eyes. Joanne nodded and sniffled. When Gina stepped out of Claude's office, she rubbed her shoulders. It was always so cold in there. She adjusted the straps of her dress and walked towards the little mini bar for the employees on the top floor and pulled out a bottle of high end cold water. As soon as she turned around, she bumped into somebody and the water fell out of her hand and rolled under a desk.
Gina scowled at the offender. It was another worker. His name was David Choi. He was the personification of a creep. He had a lot of s****l complaints filed against him but nothing ever happened to him because his cousin was Mr. Frederickson and it was hard to say whether or not Claude agreed with his bad behavior. Gina frowned at him and put her hand on her hips. "Don't you know how to apologize?" She asked.
He shamelessly shoved his hands into his pockets, stretching the material of his cloth pants and showing her an outline of his very large c**k. Quickly, Gina looked at the hardwood floor. David smirked. "I would apologize, but I'm not sorry." He had an English accent, courtesy of his time spent in English boarding schools alongside his cousin.
"Pick it up," Gina said, pointing at the bottle of water.
"I don't think I will," David's eyes shone with an unspoken challenge.
Gina had no problem standing there at the mini bar all day having a staring challenge with David, but she remembered Joanne crying in Claude's office. Everybody had left for lunch but they would be back in the next ten minutes. Gina had already wasted close to two minutes arguing with David. She bent over and picked up the bottle. She could feel David's perverted eyes on her butt as she straightened up and walked past him to the office. She allowed herself the small satisfaction of hitting against his shoulder as she passed him.
Joanne had slowly wiped her tears and had already stood up when Gina came back into the office. Gratefully, Joanne took the bottle of water and gulped it down in seconds, throwing the empty bottle at the trash bin and imagining it was Claude's head. When Gina wordlessly pulled open the door, both women gasped at what they saw outside .
Claude and David had come staggering into the office. There was blood dripping off both of them, but it was obvious that Claude was hurt. His shoulder was visibly broken and both his eyes were swollen shut. It was rapidly turning purple. His blood had soaked into his black suit and there was a bowling call sized goose egg on the side of his head. Both women stood there in shock as David lowered a barely conscious Claude onto the white, pristine sofa. The sofa that Claude had wanted to keep clean.
