Morning all, still stuffy, but not feeling too bad. Here’s hoping the stuffy is just due to the rapid weather changes and not an actual illness. We went from 70 degree weather on Tuesday, snow on Wednesday and at this point we are just spinning the wheel to see what we end up with today. There is one bright spot though. Today begins the Annual Smashwords End of Year Sale. Thousands of authors, millions of books. It is a great way to try out new authors and find some favorites. I am participating and all of my books are 50% off from now until January 1st.(some of mine are even free) This link will get you to my book page. Happy shopping. And now, the morning prompt!
I am kind of more excited about the seven way fight for dominance than anything else. So many possibilities for sabotage.
Thursday, December 12th: He was reaching the end of his patience.
He was reaching the end of his patience. He could feel it like a brick wall built across a set of train tracks. The end of the line. The moment where his patience would run out ant he would slam head long into the obstacles in his path. As he thought about it he wondered if he was the trin or if somehow he was the brick wall. Maybe he was simply built in the wrong place. Oblivious to his thoughts, Wilton droned on.
“And so we will need to make adjustments for these new rules,” he said. “I’m sure you understand.” Wilton turned away and waddled off, confident that all would be arranged.
Jeff understood. He understood too well. This was the eight set of new rules sent down in the past six weeks. He understood that rules needed to be followed and that when update to the system came alone they needed to be dealt with. However ever since management changed there had been nothing but updates.
He could see if they were systematically going through the old rules, updating and revamping. He wouldn’t like it any more but he would understand it. Except that is not what they were doing. They were trying to figure out who deserved to be in charge. Instead of picking one person to head up the family firm, shares were doled out evenly to the surviving family and their grandfather expected them to figure out who was best at what and work together for the whole of the company.
They were instead locked in a competition for the position of company president, none of them willing to take even a perceived second place to any of the others. So one would take charge, revamp the rules and then feel they put their stamp on things. Then as soon as they stepped away, one of the others would see that changes had been made and then change the exact same set of rules so they could prove they were in charge.
Jeff suspected that they each focused on undoing only what the others had done and that is why the same sets of procedures and protocols had been changed so many times. It was however getting tiresome.
He looked at the new set, marked the name. There were seven heirs and he hoped that after they each had a turn fixing his department they would leave him alone and move on to someone else. Instead it seemed as though they had doubled back. The first heir saw the protocols he set were changed and changed them.
Jeff shrugged. ‘At least they changed them back to their first set.’ He wondered if he was going to go through the same changes in rotation as they each once again sought to change things. ‘Might not be so bad,’ he thought his irritation fading a little. It was still annoying to have to change things around, but if they all stuck to the same changes they made on the first time around then he could rotate through the established sets.
‘Better than completely new ones each time,’ he thought. He set about changing up the orders of things and setting the new protocols in place. Not for the first time, he thought of leaving. A part of him wondered if these new protocols weren’t a way to drive him into retirement. He put it off, planning to stay through the change to help stability, but he didn’t see stability coming in any time soon. All of his contracts were in and his retirement secure. That had been handled. He was technically speaking a consultant until they hired a replacement.
‘Maybe I ought to simply resign my consultancy,’
Ten til Midnight 