Page 6 of A Matter of Time
He smiled too. “Don’t worry, I won’t get you any more involved than you are already, but thanks for letting me talk that out.”
“Anytime.” I meant it too; I hoped we could become friends as well as colleagues.
A calendar reminder beeped on his computer and he glanced over at the clock. “Shoot, nine o’clock already. You ready to get started on this time management thing?”
“Sounds like you need it more than me,” I teased him as we headed out together to the meeting room. We were still joking back and forth as we walked into the meeting room, until I laid eyes on the woman at the front of the room and the laughter died in my throat.
No way. Nofreakingway was Tonia Callahan standing in my meeting room on my first full day at my new job.
The expression on her face, looking momentarily like a deer caught in the headlights, made it abundantly clear to me that she hadn’t known I would be here either. She had seemed genuinely surprised to run into me, quite literally, in the hallway earlier. It didn’t feel like an act on her part.
I could call it a joke, certainly, some kind of cosmic prank, but not an act.
“Good morning, Tonia,” Jason said, going up to the front of the room and shaking her hand, completely oblivious to my reaction as I sank down into one of the remaining empty seats, trying to swallow even though my mouth had gone completely dry.
Distractedly, I picked up the pen in front of me, trying to find something to keep my hands busy, but quickly dropped it as I realized it had her name on it.
“Gentlemen, this here’s Tonia Callahan,” Jason told us all. “She’s going to whip us all into shape and get this place running like a well-oiled machine, pun intended.”
Everyone chuckled politely, including me, though my mouth was still drier than the Chihuahuan desert.
“We’re in your hands, Tonia,” Jason concluded, giving her a warm smile as he came and took a seat next to me, and a new and entirely unwelcome thought suddenly came to me.
Wasshethe one he’d been talking to me about? He’d said he was ‘kind of’ the woman’s boss, which made sense for someone like Tonia who had come here as an external consultant.
Did I just encourage my boss to hit on my ex-girlfriend?
It took all my self-control not to groan out loud as the thought crossed my mind. Honestly, I thought I was a pretty decent guy overall, just as Jason said. What on earth had I done to deserve this?
~Tonia~
Cam didn’t acknowledge me in any way when Jason Barnly introduced me to the team, so I didn’t give him any kind of special attention either. For the next two hours, I laid out my program for the team, explaining what I’d be working with them on over the month and what they could expect to have learned by the end of our time together.
Other than a few general training sessions like the one we were in, most of my work would be on a one-to-one basis. I needed to see what kind of organizational system they had in place already, where their strengths and weaknesses were, and build on that together. There were no one-size-fits-all solutions here. My services were completely individualized, letting me truly get to know the people that I had come there to help, and making them the best version of themselves they could be rather than trying to make them into something that felt unnatural for them.
That approach was what made me so good at my job.
Unfortunately, it also meant that I would need to spend several days over the next monthalonewith Cam. From the way his jaw tightened as I laid out the schedule, I could tell he picked up on that too, and that he felt just about as happy about it as I did.
He didn’t have to be happy about it though. He could hate every minute of it if he wanted to, just as long as he did what I said and he didn’t use our past as an excuse to try to sabotage what I wanted to accomplish.
Would he stoop to that level? I really didn’t know, and that worried me. The Cam I used to know had never been cruel or hurtful, but the Cam in front of me, the one with the confident look in his brown eyes, the stubble on his chin, wearing a tie and sitting around an executive’s table, wasn’t the boy I fell in love with. He had definitely changed; the question remained just how much.
As my presentation drew to a close, I summed up my program as I always did: “I know it sounds like a lot of work, gentlemen, but I guarantee you that in a month, you’ll be wondering how you ever wasted so much time before. It’s not a question of ‘if’ I can help you; it’s simply a matter of time.”
Giving me a nod of approval and a warm smile, Jason started to clap and the other men quickly joined in, following their boss’ lead.
“Any questions?” I asked as the applause died off.
One of the men raised his hand, as though we were in school. “I don’t spend a lot of time in the office, I’m usually travelling between plants, so it might be a bit tricky for us to coordinate this training.”
Jason had already warned me about that. “That’s fine. I’m happy to tag along with you for a day or two and we can look at how you can turn those travelling hours into productive work time as well.”
“Can you help us get our personal lives in order too?” another man piped up, making the whole room laugh.
“I know you’re joking, but the truth is that I can,” I replied when they had quietened down again. “When your work day is more efficient, you’ll be better able to switch off at the end of the day and truly enjoy your leisure time too. Finding that work-life balance is important to Barnly Oil, and I can definitely help with that.”
Jason gave me another nod of approval, clearly pleased with that response.
