Unsuitable

He looked so uncomfortable off spreadsheet, in the touchy feely world, she almost laughed at him. It twitched on her lunatic lips to ask him to put a dollar value on that value, call it a promotion and add an additional clump of money to her salary packet. But that’s not the way it worked. You didn’t go over your own boss’ head to ask the company COO for a promotion because he was once your boss. Even if your boss was a moron who was on a twelve month sabbatical mountain climbing to find himself, and you were in reporting limbo.

There was a process. It protected both of them from claims of nepotism. And the last thing she needed was other people thinking she’d only gotten promoted because of her prior association with Chris. And since he was divorced, and she was a single mother, prior association gossip could be a career limiting move for her. He’d probably be regarded as a hero. So she thanked him, with a minimum of annoyance in her tone, jammed her back teeth together, collected her gear and turned to open the door for them.

“What I want to say is I’m sorry.”

She spun to face him. Her lips were likely wobbling all over her face, telling him how surprising she found this.

“You haven’t received the advances you deserved.”

That was true, but the open acknowledgement was a shock and a problem. Her failure to win a promotion on three separate occasions, once pre Mia and twice after, had always been couched in language that made it plain she was lacking in the killer instinct directors needed. This is the first official hint she’d heard of having been robbed.

Officially, she’d been told she was overly consultative and too easily influenced. That she was a poor negotiator because she was too emphatic and needed to make more commercially robust decisions. In real terms that meant she was measured where the other directors were loud and forthright, and she favoured consensus over beating suppliers into submission. The fact that her projects always came in on or under budget and on time where others failed regularly on those statistics was somehow irrelevant. What wasn’t irrelevant when it shouldn’t have been, for a company that prided itself on equal opportunity, was sex and parenthood.

To be truly successful in this environment she’d gotten both of them wrong by having a uterus, a vagina and baby.

As if those body parts, and being a mother, had anything to do with her ability to wrangle a multi-million dollar infrastructure project into submission, and oversee the financing and the construction of roads and schools, factories, retail complexes, and whole new suburbs.

Except for some reason they did. For some reason her non-uterus, non-vagina bearing colleagues, even the divorced dads, did it better.

And that, for some inexplicable reason was behind Chris’ un-Chris-like behaviour. He smoothed his tie, put his hand in his pocket and took it out again, and she made the strategic decision not to rescue him. She should’ve been sticking rusty disease carrying pins in the voodoo doll.

“I’m sorry you’ve not received the rewards you’ve worked for.” He waited for her to speak and when she didn’t he coughed into his hand. She’d seen him present faultlessly in front of shareholders and media about controversial investment issues, but alone with her in the conference room, he was rattled. It was time to exercise her negotiation skills.

“That acknowledgement is less important to me than what we might do about it.” She chose to use ‘we’ specifically to show she’d continue to play ball in this maddening game where the rules were written in favour of people who shaved their faces each day and peed standing up.

“We, ah. We. I’d like to see you promoted as soon as possible.”

That was vague and lacked specificity. It’d never make it into any contract Audrey negotiated. “Could we put a date on that?” Without a date, it was nothing more than steam.

“I, er, that’s between you and Jonathan.”

Technically Chris was right, it was between her and her direct boss, Jonathan, but Jonathan was currently terrorising Sherpa, which might be the reason Chris had chosen to do this now.

“So if I was to mention to Jonathan, if he ever checks in, that you and I had this discussion and you’d like to see me promoted to director, he’d be on board with that? Would you say he’d be willing to promote me before the end of the year?”

Chris frowned. “I’m not second-guessing Jonathan and I’m not making any promises. I only wanted to acknowledge your contribution.”

Distinct back-peddling, earn a jagged pin through the eye. “Why now? I’ve been passed over for director three times.”

“Look, Audrey.” Chris put a hand to his hair, then pulled on his tie, fidget, fidget. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I didn’t know you were going to make an issue of it.”

“An issue.” A pin to the lung. Twist. How’s that for an issue.

“I was trying to be nice.”

“Nice.” A word that rhymed with ice that matched the way she cut the air with scorn. “Aren’t you the one who told me there was no room for nice in business? Isn’t being too nice the reason I haven’t been promoted?”

“Well, if it was—”

“Don’t joke about this. You don’t have a single female director, it took five years to get a second female manager, and you don’t think that’s a problem?”

His hands stilled. He lowered his chin. Another tell. If he’d been distracted before, he was refocused now. “I think having the right people for the job is the issue.”

“Even if that means discrimination?”

“I see I shouldn’t have spoken.”

Blunt needle to the heart. “No, actually you should’ve spoken sooner, try three years ago when I returned from maternity leave and got passed over because I was too nice and maybe because I had a baby, and that meant I’d lost brain cells.”