Submissive Squared

A few hours later I stood and said

"Sir?"

"Yes, Donna! Are you ready to review something?"

"Yes Sir!"

God it was flowing out of me. So easy using that term and he didn't object, he didn't say call me Jeremiah or boss.

"Come here to my desk and stand in front. Now tell me about this proposal."

I looked down at my notes.

"In the future Donna, let's learn to do without the notes."

"Yes, Sir."

I gave my report stating that the proposal in question failed to meet the statement of work from the client. So not only did it fail to recognize the client's needs, we would take a financial bath by not pricing the full workload that would be expected.

"Good. What should we do with the proposal then?"

"Sir, this proposal needs a lot of reworking to be compliant with the clients requests. Yet it is due in two days. Based on the potential profit, if I use the percentage shown here and a rough estimate of what the full price should be, it would not be financially worth the added effort at this time. However, this is a client we've done a lot of business with in the past and so my bottom line would be that we do the overtime get the proposal correct and suffer the lower return on investment. Sir!"

"That's and excellent summary and it's the same one I came up with last week. Now move on to the next one."

"Sir, am I just rehashing things that have already been done?"

"Yes Donna you are. Do you have a problem with that?"

"No Sir."

"Good because I want to see what you're made of how well you see the big picture. I expected you to see the non-responsive part, to see the marginal profit due to rushing the corrections, but to see the relationship angle is something I did not expect. If you give me similar responses to the others I will allow you a little reward at the end of the day."

"Thank you Sir."

I managed to get though the other three proposals to my boss' satisfaction, mimicking the results he'd already had but none-the-less pleasing him. I then spent some time with Sally learning from her whose calls the boss always took, who he avoided and how to deal with the ones in between. It was about six when I was called to Jeremiah's desk.

"Donna your first day was beyond my expectations. You come as advertised and I think you will work out. Of course knowing the intellectual part of the job is one thing, being capable of obeying me at all times is another type of knowledge."

I did not hear a question so I stood in front of his desk and waited. I have to admit that being here all day, reporting to him and being complemented often made me happy, the concept of discipline and corporal punishment were not in the forefront of my brain at that moment.

"As your reward Donna I am going to give you a small token of your new responsibilities. Would you like that?"

Sir, thank you! You don't need to give me a gift.

"You earned this, and it's a symbol of what you can expect when I see you developing the proper respect. Please open that on your own, I think you will want to keep this to yourself. I suggest you open it before you go home. Perhaps in your car before you drive off."

With that he handed me a manila envelope.

More confused now then ever I said good night and told my boss I'd see him in the morning and asked if I was here before him was I permitted to enter the office. He nodded and I walked out wondering what was in the envelope.