Chapter 31: Thirty One

Seulgi was excited after lunch. That is until she remembered what was waiting for her when she returned to her office. She momentarily turned coward and pondered taking the rest of the day off.  But, that wouldn’t work as they would be there the next day. And the next. And the next. Ad infinitum. She may as well get it over with.

With a cheerful heart, a light mean, and a floating smile, she stalled by taking the stairs. One step at a time when she normally took two (unless she was in heels, she had to be more careful then.)

She opened the stairwell doors and quietly approached her office with trepidation.

Wait a second. This was her office. Why should she slink into it?

So, she started to brashly walk forward, only to find her office empty of hecklers.

There was a sticky note on her keyboard that filled her with dread.

It was in Nayeon’s writing, but all it said was: “Just you wait. We’re not done with you yet.  =P”

This did NOT help Seulgi’s digestion.

Still, she had work to do and she would do it until her personal Sword of Damocles fell.

Soon, Seulgi sunk into the world of charts, graphs, documents, and emails. Her concentrations waxed and waned throughout the next hour while many different things needed to be resolved. There was a wide variety of things demanding attention, so she had to assign priority.

Software needed to be updated? Medium priority.

Is the factory getting low on materials? Medium-high priority – they were not out yet.

Extremely expensive repairs on the factory floor? – Not her department, but still someone had to OK it. She understood that taking a couple of days for maintenance on these very complex machines will save a lot of hassle when they broke down. This was of fairly high importance, but with this high cost, she could not authorize it. But she did forward this decision, with her strongly worded recommendations, to the person who could.

There were some personalities that could only clash within the company. This was inevitable when you had an edifice this large. There was no possibility of reconciliation, only suffering with each other in professionalism and not letting it interfere with work. There was evidence of this in the projects, the emails, the assignment of staff, and the shuffling of the priorities of the assignments. Some of it was subtle. Some of it was oblique. Rarely was it blatant.

The CEO was like the grandfather of an occasionally unruly bunch of children. Mostly he was hands off, but he could and would slap down the offender or offenders who got too loud.

There was one email in the pile from the CEO doing exactly that. His email was enacting a new policy in regards to interpersonal relationships and the need to maintain levels of professionalism in every respect. This was for the harmony of the company and so they would not lose face in front of clients. Again.

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Evidently, the internal disputes between two managers boiled over in front of some clients and they nearly lost a contract because two stubborn, grown children could not put aside their differences at a crucial moment.

The normally genial and grandfatherly CEO had strongly worded his email after dressing down and demoting these offenders. The fact that the CEO had reacted so harshly had surprised many, until they found out why he had done so.

Some people thought these two miscreants got off easy. A few of these people were vocal about it. When they got frowned at by their bosses, they got quiet. Obviously, they missed the message of the email. Some things, actions, and conversations would no longer be tolerated.

There were a few people who didn’t take this seriously. However, after a few written counseling statements being permanently added to their personnel files, reality hit them, hard.

The company was never run sloppy, per se, but this was being a bit more tightly ran now.

This did not have much of an effect on Seulgi and her people as they were a tight crew that ran efficiently with minimal need for interference. They had things that they jokes about, sometimes with loving malice. Very much like siblings. Jackson, being the only male, took the brunt of the questionable humor. Lucky for the girls, he took it with grace and joked back with them. Sometimes the burn was so sublet it was hours the recipient (Usually Nayeon) would yell “HEY!” and go looking for him. Only to lose the argument again.

Even with all this, Seulgi made sure to pass on this email from the CEO to all her people with some notes to them about implementing the policy. This would have to dampen some, but not all, of the jokes and pranks they could and would play amongst them.

Unfortunately, even the jokes played amongst themselves could be misinterpreted and reported to HR as harassment even when the subjects themselves were not the ones offended.

So, Seulgi added her own ‘policy’ to her people, curbing some of their excesses so that no one could bring trouble unto themselves or the rest. Everyone in her group understood the necessity for the changes and accepted them. It may be hard for Nayeon and the Terrible Twins to restrain themselves a bit more, but it was necessary.  It would actually assist the forced harmony of the workplace.

And it would also stop the rare person who would not take "No, thank you" seriously. One member of her coterie, who was recently assaulted, appreciated this even more than the rest.

And that was when it happened.

Outside Seulgi’s office, there were a pair of strident voices gathering volume and strength. As noted before, disagreements happen. However, this was more than a mere disagreement. This was starting to get personal. A male and a female were sliding like a car on ice from an argument to an actual fight. Oddly enough, it was the female that was the aggressor.

They were already getting loud, despite the male trying to deescalate it. Since the female was getting personal, he had stopped being polite and responded in kind. The others in the office were scattering like chicks before a predator. Soon, there was no one stopping them at all. There were no managers present, as they were all still at lunch.

As soon as Seulgi could no longer ignore it. She made a call to security then she got up, and headed out of the office to break it up.  That was when she heard an amazingly loud slap.

Seulgi snapped and shouted, “WHAT IS GOING ON?!”

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