for the record, in panda x addy b&b rp
gareth: don't dare call me gary, garebear, or mr. d
Just looking around the office one could tell that it belonged to an important person. It was large and spacious, all in a very severe monochromatic color scheme--though obviously very expensive, the furnishings did not shout comfort but a rather reserved sort of elegance. It was carefully calculated to impress and frighten those that stepped through the door--which was a feat in itself. In order to make an appointment with the man that sat in the plush leather chair you had to not only make it past the front desk in the main lobby, but through various receptionists and finally his personal secretary; a no-nonsense woman with a cool exterior and little mercy. Most people avoided him unless they had to--despite his surly attitude and his tendency toward anger, he was a good boss, fair in his decisions and careful in his business moves. He was honest and did not make false promises to his workers. Everything was up front; you either took it or left. On the downside, he was slow to accept change and to alter his policies, and he expected 100% effort from all his employees. He put in as much work as everyone else, sometimes even more for he didn't believe in delegating tasks to his underlings--his business was too important to trust to anyone else. A placard of clear glass with suspended chrome letters read "GARETH DUNCAN, (president & ceo)" and all along the wall were certificates and diplomas from his prestigious schools and various awards from equally prestigious institutions. There was no hope-filled story behind his success, no rags-to-riches fairy tale of any sort. He was a hard man not from necessity but from his upbringing. His father had been a criminal defense attorney, working mostly for big corporations and whomever could afford him and his mother had been the CEO of one of the corporations his father had represented. Together they were a large part of his background; he had graduate degrees in law and business from Harvard and a large sum of inheritance from his parents, whose early deaths provided him with more than enough start up capital to open his own business, building it up into his own little empire. He had grown up in an environment full of money and knowledge, groomed by both parents in their areas of expertise, and if he wasn't showered with compliments and hugs and kisses, well at least he could say he was glad to not have been coddled by his parents. Indulged, certainly, in all his whims, which had lead early only to an unreasonable expectation that his every demands would be fulfilled if only he set his glower and a growl to his voice. He had grown up a bit since then, though he still expected his demands to be met if they were reasonable in the least.
The man himself was currently striding through the hallways, staring straight ahead with his perpetual scowl fixed upon his face. He could be called ruggedly handsome, but his features were too prone to a sourness that tended to spoil his looks unless you liked the type that fancied themselves above you. That didn't mean that many woman didn't pursue him; the mixture of his good looks, money and prestige did not escape them and there was something almost romantic in the idea of taking such a rough man and softening him beneath your touch that many women had attempted to tame his feral heart, though obviously none had succeeded. He had loved before, as far as he was able to at least, but that had been in his early years when he was still a young silly man. Now he knew that love made you weak; trust made you vulnerable to attack, and optimism made you fail for lack of predicting and avoiding future calamity. He ignored all the people dipping their heads in deferential greeting, falling short of a bow as they scattered before him. Everyone had seen what sort of anger he was capable of, what little things could set him off and just how loud he could snarl if provoked well enough, and they really didn't feel like incurring that kind of negative attention--and most of them wanted to keep their jobs. He was the devil to work for; a short fuse and a tendency to be impulsive when it came to something that didn't have a bad effect on his business. For example, he wouldn't drop a client for no reason--but he went through secretaries like tissues.
The current one had been there for a month now, which was something of a record for that position. It probably had something to do with the fact that the secretary was a young Frenchman that had moved to the city a few years ago. His accent was easy enough to understand, and in a way Gareth liked him because he was different--he was actually worth the paychecks he earned. The young beautiful women that were hired for the job annoyed him almost on principle. This Lucien Démery was really clever--he knew how to act around Gareth, being just cheeky enough to be interesting and show he wasn't scared of him, but polite and quiet at the right times to show he wasn't impertinent. That was the greatest difference; Lucien acted like they were friends without taking liberties like he could get away with if they actually were friends. Gareth trusted him with the every day mundane tasks, though he certainly didn't give him any preferential treatment. If he did something wrong, he got yelled at--but not fired, as might have happened if he were a lesser employee. He also had a personal assistant that had been with him for a long time now, over a year. A slightly portly middle-aged man named Chester Hagan, a Brit with a large mustache and combed-over mop of hair. He looked everything the stereotype, drawling away in his upper-class tones and snobbish attitude. He ruled the offices with an iron fist when Gareth wasn't there. Not that he was absent often, but he had many floors to look after, and that was Mr. Hagan's job--overseer of all the other floors, he would patrol and make sure everything was going as it should be, to report back to him if something went wrong or any little problem arose. He also helped manage Gareth's every day life, keeping track of all his meetings and appointing errand-runners so that Mr. Duncan had his lunch every day, his coffee, his evening scotch before Hagan called in his chauffeur so he was waiting right at the door for Mr. Duncan. Mr. Hagan made everything run smoothly in the company and in Gareth's life.
Mr. Hagan came up to him with a paper that needed to be signed. Gareth took it and perused it carefully as he walked the practiced route he had gone down so many times in the past years. He got bored, sometimes, being cooped up in his office, and he preferred to walk around the perimeter of his office building sometimes just to remind people that he was the boss and he was watching. It was funny in a sort of perverse, masochistic way to see how scared they were of him. No one looked at him as he walked, no one offered him a smile and a "hello, sir". He was a man of tradition and habits, and it was easily predictable as to how his day went. Sometimes, however, something would happen to disrupt his habitual processes, and today something was about to go very wrong for a new employee named Maurice Barret. As he was passing through he caught sight of a man that had to have been at least in his fifties if not sixties standing over the copier system, pouring coffee from one of the pots into a cup. Gareth paused and frowned; it was an expensive piece of equipment for someone to be standing so close with liquid. "Hey, you, old man!" he barked, and the man's gaze shot up and widened in fear, his hands began to shake as their gazes locked and as Gareth stalked toward him looking like a storm cloud, Maurice panicked and accidentally dropped both the coffee mug and pot onto the copier machine. Glass and ceramic broke and coffee poured into the machine. Gareth's expression turned from annoyance to pure anger and he grabbed the man by the collar and gave him a good shake. "Do you know how much this costs? $10,000! Are you going to replace it, huh?" He stared down into the man's frightened eyes. Shoving him away from him, Maurice knocked into the counter behind him. "Well?"
"S-sir, I don't--" the man began before being interrupted.
"No, you don't have it, do you? What am I supposed to do, then? Just pay for it out of my own pocket, for your mistake? I should fire you right now and call my lawyer. I'm sure you have belongings that can work up to the sum of $10,000." He set his maximum glare on the poor man, and Mr. Hagan came up behind him and timidly offered his advice. "Sir, we've just hired this man and he's been trained--that cost us money. Perhaps we can work something out so that he forfeits his paychecks to you or something? It would be convenient and economical, sir." He stepped back to let Gareth think about it. "It would be, but who is to say this bumbling idiot would be able to do anything? That he won't break anything else?" He thought about it for a moment, then stepped close to the shaking man again. "All right. I own you now. You do everything I tell you to. Come with me." he dragged the man back to his office and sat him down, giving instructions to Hagan to call his lawyer to draw up some official paperwork. "From now on, you will be, in effect, my personal slave. You will work for me without pay until you make up the cost of a new machine. This means you will be the person who goes to get my food and coffee, fetches me the paper, my mail, any packages that arrive, you will clean my office every single day before I arrive at work. You will not take breaks unless you do not have a job at the moment. In which case, you will ask Mr. Hagan or Mr. Démery if I have a job waiting for you. Do not enter this office again unless instructed to do so. Any object I send you to fetch will be brought to Lucien at the front desk, and he will bring it to me. I don't want to to see your face. For now, you are dismissed. Arrive tomorrow with my coffee and bagel and you will sign the papers. Mr. Hagan will instruct you as to my daily routines. You are dismissed." He watched Maurice scurry out of the office as quick as possible, and he sighed. It was a good punishment, and a good way to get his money; but it meant he had to deal with a complete fool running his errands for him, and that prospect worried him more than just a bit.
"SPEECH"
THOUGHT
