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It was only a short presentation, so after about fifteen minutes, the staff were all back at their desks or in the laboratory. Billie was pleased it hadn’t been a long meeting as she had so much to do. Piers would be wanting some firm plans from her by the end of the week. She’d only been with BioQex for about two weeks and she was finding it all quite tough. With having to move into the area as well she had so much to do outside of work as well. She was renting a flat in Persford which was quite expensive but she didn’t want a long drive to work. She had done that before and was fed up with getting stuck in traffic, feeling the working day was being made unnecessarily long. So the high price of renting was offset by the fact that she could usually be at her desk within fifteen minutes from leaving home, providing she didn’t get caught up in the school run. She was lonely in her flat, her partner Sam hadn’t been able to find a job in the area so for the time being they were just seeing each other at weekends. Well, at least it meant she could concentrate on her job during the week.
Once Brett started fully at BioQex she would report directly to him rather than Piers and she was due to have a short one to one meeting with Brett later this afternoon. He was certainly a very attractive man, smartly dressed, slim, average height and neatly gelled back hair. She was sure he would get a lot of attention from the female contingent here at BioQex.
She looked over towards the laboratory and could see Nick Thomas at the centre of a huddle relaying some story to his colleagues. Nick was a very good scientist but she had noticed that he liked to chat rather too much for her liking. She was new to the company so didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot but she would be keeping an eye on how much time he spent gassing. He obviously put in the hours but it was no good if he distracted other members of staff, Kirsty in particular needed to dedicate all her concentration in the direction of her reactions. She was a pleasant and keen worker but she had a lot to learn and could ill afford any accidents. It was all too easy to be labelled as slipshod and careless and that type of reputation could be hard to shed even when one’s behaviour improved.
She looked up again, ‘for goodness sake,’ she muttered, she almost felt like going to knock on the glass window of the lab to get Nick to knuckle down. He looked over at that point so she held his gaze and it must have signalled to him that she wasn’t too pleased, so he stopped talking and the group broke up and set about their reactions. She had about an hour before her meeting with Brett, she would have a cup of tea, she didn’t want her breath to be reeking of coffee, not that she would be getting that close to Brett, definitely not.
**
Brett was about halfway through his one-to-one meetings with staff and things seemed to be going quite well. It was rather tiring though, having to remember everyone’s name and who they supervised etc. He’d been given a chart of the current staffing so that helped. It would take a few weeks to get to know everyone and build relationships.
Amanda had scheduled a comfort break in the middle of his meetings and had brought him a cup of sludge-like coffee, presumably from a vending machine. He didn’t even know if the company actually had a vending machine, perhaps it was made in a makeshift kitchen. There was no fancy coffee bar here unlike at his previous company, that wasn’t good news. Perhaps he could get one of those pod machines on expenses and have it in his office, he was not prepared to drink rubbish like this. Nor was he going to make his own drinks in a communal kitchen which was probably messy and horrible. He wasn’t sure how he was going to cope at lunchtimes either, he usually got a meal or a sandwich in the restaurant but he assumed here that people brought in some home-made sandwiches. Well, he couldn’t see himself embracing domesticity like that, perhaps he would have to buy a couple of packets of sandwiches on the way home several times a week or something, then bring them in the next day. He laughed to himself, he was getting rather obsessed with his meal arrangements.
The biggest surprise of the day was when he scanned the assembled staff at the welcome meeting and spotted a guy at the back who looked remarkably like the busybody who was in the wine bar that unfortunate Monday evening some weeks ago. The evening when the woman he was meeting on what was actually a spot of business, not a date, had subsequently been involved in an accident. That night the chap had been wearing glasses and a baseball hat but he was sure it was him. Today he’d caught his gaze and he was sure there was a flicker of recognition. It could well have been he who was responsible for the police asking him some awkward questions. Well, he thought, if it was indeed you I will be keeping my eye on you and I will make it quite clear exactly who is in charge here, you had better watch out.
He looked at his watch and realised his next appointment would be here soon. Wilhelmina Matheson, what a name, it said Billie in brackets. He could see from the reporting line that she was going to be one of his direct reports. Let’s hope you are an attractive lady he thought, that will help brighten my weekly meetings with you.
