“Are you listening?”
“I’m always listening.” I grinned at him. “The rapper Drix wants us to upgrade his computer security. I’ll do it myself.”
“He’s got a mouth on him but he’s a priority client and we want to make him happy. Word on the street is he’s thinking about opening his own record label. That means he’d need someone to keep all of that multimillion dollar music of his locked up nice and safe for him and his artists and we want to be in the running for the job.”
“I’ve got it,” I said simply.
“You sure about that?”
“Positive.”
“Running an IT company is…”
I cut him off. “Forty percent doing the work and making sure our product works properly, thirty percent playing people politics, and thirty percent customer service.” I recited the same shit he’d told me frequently.
He nodded. “That’s right.”
“And I’m on it. You don’t have to worry about it.”
“I know. I know.” He exhaled and shook his head. “I trust you. I wouldn’t be signing this company over to you next year if I wasn’t confident you could run it effectively. But if you’re going to lead, you have to be willing to follow,” he reminded me. “I don’t hire people I have to instruct or micromanage. I hire people who know shit I don’t know. If they can’t teach me shit, I don’t need to be paying them. That’s how I’ve always felt.”
“Nah. I get you. There’s no reason to have a team around who can’t contribute to the betterment of the organization.”
“That’s right.”
“This company is your baby but you don’t have to worry about how I’ll take care of it. And if you ever want to pop in, you can do that. I don’t need you reiterating the lessons you’ve instilled in me my entire life. You don’t hire people you can’t learn from, remember?”
He grinned. “Alright, Kiano.”
“Alright.” I echoed. “Anything else?”
“This year's budget is in your hands. Make sure you finalize it for accounting this week.”
“Got it.”
“Well, that’s it.”
“Alright.” I pushed away from the boardroom table and climbed up. “I’ll schedule something with Mr. King right now then get to work on that budget.”
“Thank you.”
“Welcome.” I slid a hand into my pocket and used the other to unlock my phone as I walked out of the room.
Jiselle was still online, talking about something I couldn’t hear due to not wanting to put the volume on but I was okay with that. I just watched her talk and laugh, wearing a slightly sheer black nightgown, showing off her matching bra and underwear set.
I headed straight to my office and called Drix to schedule a meeting. Then I put one earbud in, propped my phone up beside my computer screen, and got to work running through emails and adjusting the budget my father had made the previous year to reflect how I wanted it to look for the current one.
My parents had damn near built their IT company from scratch, and as their only child, it would one day be mine. I’d followed in my mother’s footsteps, getting a double bachelor's in computer science and management information systems with a concentration in formation systems then went on to get a master’s in business administration. I’d been working at the company long before I’d even graduated, learning whatever my parents wanted to teach and being somewhat of an intern. I answered phones when I was younger, graduated to going out with our tech support team to troubleshoot in person, then started answering emails and working in customer service, andso forth and so on. My parents did whatever the business needed and wanted to make sure I was equipped to do the same when the time came.
I was.
I wasn’t just falling in line because I loved my parents and it meant a lot to keep their business in the family. I genuinely enjoyed my job. I liked the challenge that came with it and knowing I was capable of changing, fixing, and fucking with things a lot of people couldn’t. It didn’t hurt that bouncing around the building from job to job meant there was no way to know for sure what I would get for the day. I liked not being stuck in an office all day and knowing it wasn’t often that it would ever be a fully boring day.
I finished what I’d had slotted for the day with Jiselle talking directly into my ear. When she announced that she would be offline for a while, I reached for my phone almost automatically and purchased a one-on-one call for later.
I wouldn’t be able to handle going through the rest of the day without her voice. I listened to her read out that she’d seen my purchase and would private message me to schedule a time and finally closed her site for the first time all day.
Knowing I had our talk to look forward to kept me going through a business lunch, two interviews, and my meeting with Drix who happened to be one of my new favorite consumers. He was a straightforward man who knew what he wanted and what he was willing to pay.