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Kevin was waiting in main reception for his meeting at 3.30 p.m. He was inwardly anxious as he’d already had the requests for his invoices. There was so much room for error in the ordering process he wasn’t too worried, he could make up excuses for those missing orders and he’d been very careful. His main niggling concern was that he’d provoked Nick Thomas into reporting him, but he’d managed to counter that by accusing Nick of assault, so the company would be unlikely to want to proceed on his testimony as they would concurrently have to pursue his counter-allegation. Perhaps it was a chat about pay, could it be a rise or a cut, he had no idea, or maybe an expansion of the workforce and he was to have a new role. He then came back to his senses and began to go through his actions as to whether he’d been careless, could anyone have spotted him, he just didn’t know.
The clock ticked round until 3.45 p.m. and he was still waiting, typical he thought, management trying to make themselves look important whilst they were no doubt chatting over a cup of tea. Just then Amanda came down into reception and asked him to follow her upstairs.
‘This way please Kevin,’ she said, opening Brett’s office door where he was greeted by Brett and Piers.
‘Please take a seat, Kevin,’ indicated Brett.
‘Thank you,’ he replied.
‘As you know the company has had some concerns about our ever-increasing consumables budget,’ said Piers, his face expressionless.
‘Well, yes, I guess so, I’ve submitted all my paperwork to that young girl in finance.’
‘Yes, and that was very helpful, but we have something to show you,’ and Brett turned around his laptop to face Kevin who took out some reading glasses and peered at the screen. His face fell and his mouth started to twitch. For once he was speechless. His accusers remained silent waiting for his response. Eventually, Kevin shrugged rather than speaking and removed his glasses.
‘Do you have anything to say?’ asked Piers.
‘Not really,’ replied Kevin, all the fight had left him. Inwardly he was seething. He knew who was responsible, that lazy bastard Shane. He would kill him if he could get his hands on him.
‘We will pay you to the end of next week, we will be requesting that the jobcentre sends a replacement on Monday. We require you to come in on Monday to ensure a smooth handover, at the end of Monday if you wish you are free to leave the company and do not need to work to the end of the week. Failure to turn up on Monday will ensure that we press charges and you will have a criminal record.’
‘Are you in agreement with our terms?’
‘Well, I don’t suppose I have much choice. I’m fed up with your poxy company anyway. If you’d paid me a decent wage I’d not have had to resort to this little bit of business. Besides, look at you with your fancy offices, fancy suits and flash cars. I’ve seen you driving off-site like you are some millionaires or something whilst the rest of us work for next to nothing. Eight pounds an hour you pay me and I work very hard whilst you are having your long lunches and taking paid holidays and getting sick pay. I get nothing if I don’t turn up, it’s not fair and I was thinking of leaving anyway, I’ve got my pride you know. And your staff always being rude to me and taking me for granted, I’m sick of you, sick of you and you can piss off.’
Kevin was standing by this time, gesticulating and pointing, his face was puce coloured and he was sweating profusely.
‘Have you quite finished?’ asked Piers, ‘you know the way out,’ and he turned his back on Kevin to look out of the window. The guilty party stormed out throwing the door back so it bounced on its hinges nearly rebounding and hitting him in the face.
Piers turned to Brett and smiled, ‘Well that went well,’ and they both smiled.
They had decided that with everything that was happening it was probably the easiest course to take, despite the fact that Kevin might well go on to do the same in another job. But it solved their immediate problem and they couldn’t face any further negative publicity. They’d calculated that the losses were probably in the hundreds of pounds rather than thousands and legal bills alone could amount to more than that. Quite simply they wanted to be rid of him, he’d paid the price, he might have trouble getting another job at his age and that might be punishment enough.
