Spying On The Boss. Janet Lee Nye
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showed a diverse group. Three women, one white, one black and one Hispanic, and two young, handsome men, one white and one black, smiled at the camera. They were dressed in khakis and blue button-down shirts. “We meet all your cleaning needs!” the caption proclaimed.
Sadie tossed it on the table. She smiled and shook her head. Show no weakness. “They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But, hey, any of you want to go work for Marcus Canard, I’ll give you a glowing recommendation.”
Josh handed her a cup of coffee, steaming hot and black. “Forget him,” he said as he took his seat. “Dude doesn’t get it. Never will.”
“Get what?” Wyatt asked, sitting forward and propping his arms on the table. He looked at Sadie. She shrugged and gestured at Josh.
“Simple,” Josh said, “you get what you pay for. We work our asses off. We go beyond the basics and go out of our way to make everything right for the client. Why? One, it’s what Sadie expects from us. Two, it’s what the customers pay more for. Three, it’s what she pays us good money to do. Marcus pays his staff minimum wage. He keeps them all part-time so he doesn’t have to provide benefits. Sadie offers benefits even to part-time employees, plus extras, like free gym memberships. He doesn’t care about his employees, so why should they care about him or his company’s reputation?”
Sadie sat down. Her knees were a little weak. Josh’s praise meant a lot to her. The guys clearly agreed with him, too, which made tears start in her eyes. She sipped coffee to wash down the lump in her throat. They believed she had it together. None of them knew she was running scared every day. It wasn’t about Marcus and the competition. It was about her. She had to succeed. She had to. She was supposed to have been a loser living in poverty, probably marrying a similar loser and having a passel of kids.
The Cleaning Crew was a fluke. She’d left her first maid job and was on her own. She’d cleaned private homes from sunup to sundown six days a week. It’d started with a conversation about the Powerball lottery, which was up to some unimaginably huge amount. The client had asked Sadie what she’d do if she won. Sadie replied she’d buy a nice house and hire a team of gorgeous guys to cook and clean for her. The client laughed and said, “Who wouldn’t? I’d pay extra for a hot man to clean my house.” The purr in the client’s voice had amused Sadie. When her client list grew to the point where she didn’t have enough hours in the day to do all the work and was thinking of hiring another person to help she remembered that purr. And hired a hot guy. It had grown from there. A joke. But she could point to it and say, “See, I’m not a loser. I’m doing fine, thank you very much. I don’t need help. I don’t need anything.” The fear that at any moment she could do something stupid and ruin it all haunted her. Then everyone would shrug and say, what do you expect from someone like her? She sipped more coffee and forced the doubts from her mind. Show no weakness. Wrap it up tight, shove it down deep and keep plowing forward.
“Okay,” she said when she thought she could speak. “Let’s get this meeting going. You have jobs to get to.”
“I’ve got a hot blonde in my bed to get back to,” Cody quipped.
“I don’t want to hear about your sister,” Sadie replied tartly, opening her notebook to the list of topics she wanted to cover.
The room erupted with laughter and shouts. Sadie looked up and her eyes met Wyatt’s. He was smiling but raised his eyebrows in a question. She shrugged and quirked up a corner of her mouth. Sometimes you had to play the audience.
“All right, come on. First item. We have two new employees, Wyatt Anderson and Aaron Stone. Welcome them.” She paused for the guy razzing and grunting that passed for welcoming. “Aaron, you’ll be with Sam. And Wyatt, you’ll be working with DeShawn. Now for the boring stuff. The state of South Carolina is requiring me to provide proof you know how to properly dilute the new floor-cleaning solution. Molly has the sign off sheets. Go tell her how to do it properly and get signed off. She may give you a lollipop.”
She ran through the list quickly. She hated meetings. Hated everyone looking at her, expecting her to be all boss-like and perfect. And she was beginning to hate the way she could feel Wyatt’s gaze on her skin. He seemed as though he was going to fit in and do a good job. She was going to have to get her hormones under control. She opened the floor to questions.
“What are you going to do about the ad?” Malik asked.
“Nothing. Marcus Canard advertises. We don’t. The work we do is the only advertising we need. Almost all our new clients, about 95 percent, come from referrals. The rest stumble on us by Google search. We have almost zero client loss. The last three clients we lost, it was only because they moved away. No one has canceled the Crew because of our service.”
She stood. “I need more coffee, and y’all need to get to work. Anyone who doesn’t have a client scheduled in the next hour needs to get Molly to check you off on the cleaner. Wyatt and Aaron, get with your partners. I gave them the packets already. They’ll show you what needs to be done. Everyone have a great day. Call me if you need anything. Don’t forget first Friday is this week.”
She caught Josh’s eye and tilted her head, indicating for him to come with her. She ran upstairs to let Jack into the office. He got too excited when so many people were here. While he amused himself by sniffing around the conference room, she poured more coffee and went to her office. Josh sat across from her desk, quiet and watchful as she slurped down the second cup.
“New guy seems interesting,” he said.
“Which one?”
Josh grinned and lounged back in the chair, his long lanky legs stretched out before him. He stretched and rested his clasped hands on top of his head. “Come on, Saff, how long have we known each other? You get a little panicky when you know he’s watching you.”
Was it obvious? “I do not. Do I?”
Josh laughed and her cheeks burned. “Yes, but I think I only noticed because I know you so well. I meant because he’s a little older than most of the guys.”
“He’s not too much older than you. He was a house painter. Economy is still shaky. Got custody of his niece and needed more steady hours and pay.”
“Seems like a decent guy. What’d you want to talk to me about?”
Sadie took another sip, appraising Josh over the rim of her mug. He was good-looking, with dark wavy hair and blue eyes. He could probably pass for her brother. He was the hot guy she’d hired for the experiment that became the Cleaning Crew. Barely a man back then. He’d been about to turn nineteen, full of attitude and anger and a desperate need to belong to something. Sadie had understood. She’d taken a gamble with him and it had paid off. Paid off very well. They clicked immediately when he told her he’d aged out of the foster-care system. Eighteen and on the street. Exactly like her. Only he had been lucky and his foster family had let him stay until he finished high school. Sadie hadn’t been as lucky. She’d been put on the street the minute she turned eighteen, four months from graduation.
He was one of two people who knew her whole story. And she was the only one who knew his. Her instincts had been right about him. Given a chance, some guidance and sisterly affection, his loyalty had become a fierce thing. And she paid him well for all he did. He’d trained every new guy for years. He set the tone and enforced her expectations in guy speak that carried more weight than her rules and regulations. She trusted him like no other. This was why she hesitated to say what she’d brought him here to say. But she knew her hesitation was nothing but selfishness.
“I’ve been getting inquiries,” she said. “About if we would consider franchising. And Molly’s been logging at least five calls a week from the Columbia area asking if we take clients there. So there’s a potential market.”
“But you’re against selling a franchise. Don’t want to lose control over the quality.”
“Exactly. Here’s what I was thinking. Not a franchise, but a second office.”
“Uh-huh. Might work. Would