Writing Excercise #11

I haven't done a writing excercise in a dog's age, but I asked for prompts on my Facebook page and this is a response to one of them. Couple of things:

1) Once again, completely original, not connected to any other universe, mine or otherwise.

2) Also again, it's in first person and I so very rarely do first person. I can write it for the short things, but I find it very hard to maintain over the course of a longer story. It's also present/past tense instead of past/past perfect, which as a rule I don't like and have never written. I think I caught all the tense issues, but there may be a couple here and there.

3) The prompt will probably make no sense outside of a select few. The fact that you may not understand the prompt does not necessarily matter. :)

Prompt: DJK
Fandom: original

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My name is Ashley, and I have the Boss From Hell.

I know most people say that, but I’m full-on serious about this. The man is the Tasmanian Devil. He swoops in, muddies the waters to the point of sit-at-your-desk-with-your-head-in-your-hands stress, and then swoops back out, leaving everyone else to clean up the mess.

He creates chaos like nothing I’ve ever seen.

Now, Ashley, you’re saying, he can’t really be that bad. You want an example? Okay, try this one on for size.

We had some people coming in for an interview. Staffing has never been a problem but we’d found ourselves with so much work that I needed help running the front office. So I was pleased as punch when I’d learned that he’d agreed to not only find a couple of new recruits to help me out but also that I was getting a promotion to Office Manager. Which, not to toot my own horn or anything, I already was. But at least now I’d get the title, the pay bump, and the staffers to manage instead of doing it all myself.

After weeks of work, I had whittled down the stack of potential candidates (who knew we were in such high demand?) to the two I felt would do the best job. I’d just gotten the potential recruits comfortable with some beverages when Mr. Chaos himself stormed out of his office, all fire and brimstone and ranting about how none of us know what we’re doing and how we’re all holding him back.

Now, his rants are part and parcel of working here. I’m so used to them that I pretty much tune him out the second I hear that particular intake of breath and that particular tone in his voice. He rants and raves and then calms down and a second or two later, he’s forgotten he was even angry. Maybe he has too much on his mind. Or maybe he just needs the release. I don’t know. The point is, it’s normal and I was unfazed.

My recruits, however, were very much fazed. They both glanced at each other and took off running before I had even realized what happened. If it had been a cartoon, they would have left little puffs of smoke in their wake.

My boss looked from the chairs the recruits had been occupying to the door and then to me. “Was it something I said?”

I simply sighed. All those hours of work and I still had no new demon staffers to show for it. But I suppose these are the kinds of things that happen when you work in Hell’s Front Office, running interference for the Bossman himself. At least the office is never cold.