Having your stressed to the max boss suddenly stop, look at you with a big smile on his face. And then grab you and twirl around with you like you weighed nothing was quite the experience. It left Emily feeling both lightheaded and giddy when he finally put her back down.
She wanted so badly to break out in a hysterical fit of giggles, but she stopped herself. Now was not the time to be laughing. Seconds later she went from giddy to worried as Derek kept repeating the words 'personal touch' and looking at her like she should somehow know exactly what he was on about.
"Mind explaining what is going on to the people in the room who are not mind readers Derek?" He gave her a look. Clearly in his excitement, the man must have thought he had explained things.
"A personal touch, Emily, a personal touch. If my uncle were to be here, all he would have to do would be to write a statement taking back everything that he said. But even then we would still need to spend a lot of money, fixing our reputation and rebuilding trust with our workers," He gave her another smile, practically glowing.
"But if someone higher up, not just a manager, or a director. Someone like say…the CEO… paid them a visit and gave his word that nothing was going to happen to them, and not only that, but also sat down and talked to them. All this would go away. The CEO's personal touch, that is all that it will take…simple," At his explanation, all of Emily's stress melted away.
It would not be as simple as he painted it, but for the first time, they had a way out that did not include either kissing up to his uncle, or spending tons of money.
"I will go make sure that the pilot gets the jet ready," She told him, already on her way out, but he stopped her.
"No, not the jet today," He told her.
"I want to seem as humble as possible, show them that I am one of them. Book a flight, make it first class," Emily had to supress an eye roll at that, first class, of course, nothing said one with the people like seeing flying first class as slumming it.
"Consider it done, but I still need to move things around in your schedule," She told him and went to do just that.
She managed to move every thing around. The meeting that she could not cancel, one with a rival Group, was pushed back to half past three the next day. Giving them until at least twelve the next day to be flying back since it was a three hour flight. Which meant, since they would be arriving after sunset, they would have a few more hours to get familiar with the situation on the ground, and then meet up with the workers in the early hours of the morning.
As luck would have it, she only just managed to get the last first class seat for him, which meant that she was flying economy, great, just great.
From then on, it was a mad dash to get everything ready before the flight. In addition to getting all of the relevant documents for the meeting ready. Emily was also in charge of the little things. She was the one who called his butler( his butler, seriously!) to have the man inform one of the maids( as in there were many) to pack Derek a bag with not only his travel documents, but also a change of clothes so that he was ready to go. For her part, she nipped out for thirty minutes, grabbed her things, shoved them in a bag and headed back to work.
They had just enough time for a quick lunch, and then for Derek to call yet another meeting. This time informing every one that he had something in mind to solve the problem. He was deliberately vague on the details and Emily did not blame him.
Despite being the one to get them into the mess in the first place, his uncle had a charm to him. There was no telling who the man would wrap himself around to get information.
Once the meeting ended, she and Derek were off, his butler driving them to the airport. She had a moment to feel sorry for the other man when she saw all the bags he was carrying, but then she looked over at Derek, imagined him carrying all the bags back and had to supress a smile. By three o'clock, they were airborne. And Emily hoped with everything in her that Derek's plan worked.