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I nodded quickly, “Yes I took four years of it in school. I may be a bit rusty in speaking it, but I can understand it quite well.” I left out the part of taking it in high school and not college, but it wasn’t an outright lie.
Relief crossed his face and he leaned back into his seat. “Great! Mr. Jones is incredibly particular about his translators, and he fired the one he had been using this morning and was then left up a creek because he has an acquisition meeting this afternoon for a company worth nine hundred million dollars.” He paused as my eyes grew large and he nodded in agreement. “I know, that’s a crazy amount of money, even for him as a billionaire. But aside from being able to speak and understand Mandarin, he needed someone with shorthand ability to note take the translations. So that’s your task today, are you capable of that? On day one?” He asked with pure hope on his face.
“Yes sir. I can handle that.” I answered confidently.
“Perfect!” He clapped his hands together and as if on que, a knock sounded at the door and a small man with dark olive skin stood with a large file in his hands. “Sebastian! We’re ready for you come on in. Cora, this is Sebastian Wallace, head of HR for Jones Holding and Halo, there are some forms you will need to sign for payment and confidentiality.”
“Okay.” I said, a bit of pensive apprehension ran up my spine as Sebastian sat down next to me and started pulling packet after packet out of his file and laid it out on the desk in front of us.
“Ms. Valentine, this is your payment form for your time billed to Jones Holding. You’ll automatically be paid for an eight-hour day, even if the meeting only takes twenty minutes. And if the meeting were to go longer than eight hours, you would be paid for double the time at least.” He said, sliding the form over to me and indicating where to sign. I took a second and let my eyes rove over the print and froze when my eyes landed on the salary for an eight-hour shift.
“I’m sorry, there seems to be a typo here.” I said and pushed it back to Sebastian with my pen pointing to the salary.
He eyed it and his eyebrows fell over his eyes sharply. “Do you have experience professionally with translating or shorthand note taking?”
“I worked as a bilingual call center rep for a while.” I answered embarrassingly. “Surely not anything that’s up to this standard though.”
“Well it’s still professional experience, and you’re right, you should be compensated more for that, I’ll send that back to payroll and have that raised for you.”
“Raised?” I gasped, “I pointed it out thinking that it was far too high already.”
He leaned back in his chair and smiled at me, pulling his reading glasses off the edge of his nose. “You are a breath of fresh air Ms. Valentine.” He said and shook his head, folding the packet and setting it to the side. “No, it’s far too low, I’m going to get you at least two grand per meeting, don’t you worry dear.”
I bit my tongue to keep from arguing with him, as he seemed so sure I was worth so much more.
Two grand for one meeting? Two grand used to take me two weeks or more to make and that was working more than two jobs to do so.
Holy fuck.
I tried not to show my shock and short myself publicly as he handed me more forms, including an NDA and security form to be employed as per diem for Jones Holding.
I just tried to absorb as much as possible as he went over all sorts of policies and procedures so I would be up to speed for the meetings this afternoon and before I knew it, it was lunch time. I was to go up to the seventieth floor at one pm for the meeting, so I had an hour for lunch.
Mr. Peterson showed me to where my normal desk was, right outside of his office and I left my work things there and went in search of some food.
When I got to the main lobby of Halo, Nat was standing up from her desk with her purse in tow as she turned to me and smiled. “Hey! How did it go this morning?”
“Uh, good I think.” I said scratching my forehead, “I think I’ve absorbed so much information in the last five hours that it’s all just… stuck in my head, unprocessed.” I laughed and so did she.
“Are you going out for lunch?”
“Yes. Can you recommend anywhere close that’s edible? I have to be back early to go upstairs for the meeting.”
“Well you’re in luck, I’m headed to a café around the corner and I’m feeling chatty so you can come with me, and I’ll make sure I get you back in plenty of time.”
“Perfect.”
We rode the elevators down and walked out into the warm spring sunshine and then around the corner of the building to a café that smelled heavenly as soon as we were outside of the doors.
“God it smells good here.” I groaned and my stomach growled.
Nat laughed and walked up to the counter, “Any deli sandwich or salad here is phenomenal. Their protein bowls are to die for though.”
She ordered a bowl and a half of a sandwich, and I ordered a half a sandwich and a salad and then we took a seat while we waited for them to be delivered.
“So Reid Haskins huh?” Nat asked, leaning in, and wagging her eyebrows at me.
“Who?” I asked, fighting with the straw in my tea.
