His Naughty Lessons-Chapter 260: That Fudge of a Boss

** Chelsea **

Chelsea wasn’t actually that serious about the gala. Sure, she had been extremely curious at one point and was even willing to work hard all year in exchange for the Employee of the Year invitation, but Vanessa’s meddling had gotten her quickly disillusioned — if all the rest of the privileged finance circle was like that woman, then maybe the gala was simply overrated and full of obnoxious people to begin with. Not her idea of a nice party after all.

But since Harper and Eli offered so kindly ... How could she say no? Friends wouldn’t let friends down, especially not when the said friend was handing out a free gala ticket that you could use to rub it in your boss’s face. Especially not when the said friend had a brother who was quite handsome and kinda cute ... though that was a thought better saved for another day.

Having set up that friend in question for more relationship help, which hopefully would lead to another handsome repayment some day in the future as well, Chelsea felt incredibly accomplished for the weekend, and she couldn’t wait until Monday to actually start showing off that accomplishment in Vanessa’s face.

Monday, however, came with a surprise, and Chelsea almost spilled her coffee on her way to the office when she saw the first email on her phone that contained her weekly workload assignment.

A full market projection analysis. Three sets of budget presentation slides. Two corporate spending models and one potential client compatibility research ... fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com

What the fuck? Who did Vanessa think she was, superwoman or some house slave who happened to know magic and didn’t need to sleep?

Forget about rubbing the gala invitation in her face. If the Employee of the Year thing wasn’t yet clear to be Vanessa’s doing, this one was a thousand percent obviously her, and Chelsea was never the type to meekly swallow up a bully’s threat. Turning on her heels before reaching her own desk, she strode straight to Vanessa’s office and barged in.

"The heck?" Vanessa snapped her head up from her phone, a smile frozen on her face and quickly turning into twisted rage. Clearly, whatever she was looking at on the phone wasn’t work. "Chelsea! Does someone need to teach you how to knock before opening doors?"

"Only if someone teaches you how to do your job and actually look at the BS assignments before you send it out." Chelsea crossed her arms, unthreatened by her boss’s anger. "You gave me nearly a whole month’s work for this week. Don’t tell me this is not some kind of trick to make me put in extra hours and then get blamed all the same for failing the deadlines."

To Vanessa’s credit, she actually kept up with the pretense and smiled. "Oh, but isn’t our Employee of the Year supposed to be the most efficient and productive member on the team?" she scoffed. "I thought this much workload would be a piece of cake for you ... unless, of course, you’ve actually gotten that Employee of the Year by cozying up to the award committee, not by doing real excellent work."

... Seriously? Had this woman gone mad, to the point of resorting to this type of cheap slander?

Chelsea had originally hoped to be at least courteous toward her boss. But now, it didn’t look like that was necessary. "I see ... So it appears that you are not only incapable of doing your job, but also blind and incapable of understanding other people doing their jobs." She plopped down with a flourish into the chair across from Vanessa’s desk. "I can help you there. How about I make you two options to choose from: one, pull all that bullshit off of my weekly assignment. Two, I’ll print out the email, paste it on the wall for everyone to admire, and then take the week off. Good luck getting someone else to be your loyal lackey and do all that work for you instead."

Obviously, this wasn’t how she normally dared to talk to her boss. But thanks to Harper’s advice on Saturday, Chelsea truly saw her wakeup call — a bitchy boss like Vanessa wasn’t worth shit to work for! Why the heck was she still stooping here, if this madwoman was really so determined to make her life miserable for a baseball game that wasn’t even her fault?

Besides, she also had her own leverages to work with ...

"How dare you!" Vanessa was increasingly outraged now, stabbing a finger in her employee’s direction. "I’m your manager, Chelsea. You do whatever work I assign to you, that is simply your job responsibility. Try take the week off, and don’t say I didn’t warn you when you come back to find yourself fired!"

Chelsea steepled her fingers with a chuckle. "Really? Fired?" She leaned forward, staring cheerily at her boss. "If I remember correctly, we’ve just lost our biggest venture bidding of the quarter to Sanderson Funds last week. Because you held back on my analysis and didn’t report those results to the board. Even your daddy is looking into it now, isn’t he? I wonder how everything will look to upper management when I’m suddenly fired at such a convenient time."

Vanessa’s anger abruptly dwindled a little, and she looked back at Chelsea with a hint of suspicion.

"Not to mention that Sanderson and Sterling Trust have been talking about a large scale co-investment for a while now," Chelsea continued. "We all know that’s why the bid last week was such a huge deal, and why all this extra workload suddenly popped out of nowhere." She tapped on the high pile of documents on Vanessa’s desk, which she knew was what the long assignment list she had just received was about. "So, think about it twice. Are you sure you want to fire your Employee of the Year? Or is it a better idea to try to smile at her and ask her nicely, so that she might consider helping you just a little with all this shit you have to sort through?"

Chelsea didn’t bother looking at her boss’s face when she got up from the chair and sauntered toward the door. Well, she had an email to print out, and a vacation request to submit to HR, unless—

"Wait."

—unless her boss had absolutely no backbone and was going to beg her back for help.