Work Conflict

Robert had been working with the Solar Alliance company for almost a year now. His assignments on the job were mostly to travel to distant planets and perform security checks at different security installations to make sure they had the necessary patches and updates.

He wasn’t too keen on the job at first but he decided to give it and try and put in his best efforts. This was his first professional role ever since he graduated from Suncity University back home on Earth II.

The man he hired him was an interesting fellow. He had decided to start his company after working with the big guys at Alpha Prime Security. Robert’s boss was smart and articulate. Robert sometimes wondered if he was intimidated because for some reason, he never really felt at ease around him. But he figured it was in his head so he decided to not let it bother him.

The Solar Alliance team started off small but quickly grew as they finished contracts and assignments at different locations in their sector. The team had hired some business guys along with a technical team to accomplish bigger missions and contracts.

Robert had just gotten back to base from an assignment on the planet of HillPrime I. As he was walking to his workstation, he ran into a new female hire. Her name was Ashley. She was the new personal assistant to his boss. Robert couldn’t figure out why his boss just never went with the virtual assistants. Lots of top management guys used them. But he figured maybe virtual AIs were not for his boss.

Ashley was very pretty. Hardworking too. She was taking care of scheduling meetings, running errands and doing all kinds of stuff for Robert’s boss. The business was growing and there were a lot of things happening at Solar Alliance. Maybe this was the right choice for Robert as a profession. But that nagging feeling of being uncomfortable was still at the back of his head.

The job was becoming a bit stressful. Solar Alliance had managed to get more government contracts which increased Robert’s workload. Everybody at the company had lots of stuff on their place and there was a lot of tension at the work base.

Even Ashley looked stressed. But she was always around, interacting with the crew and getting to know the crew more personally. Robert kind of liked her but she was already spoken for so he knew that was a no go area. She already had a boyfriend back on Earth II and already talking about marriage.

At the end of a long day, Robert was getting ready to head back to the place when he noticed Ashley by herself in the corridor. She looked more upset than usual.

He approached her and asked her if she was alright and she said “Yeah” but he knew something was wrong. He could feel it. He asked her again and said she could tell him what was bothering her.

Ashley looked both ways, grabbed Robert’s hand and pulled into one of the rooms.

She told Robert about her experience working with his boss. He was constantly hitting on her, making verbal comments every now and then which she thought was inappropriate. At first, she had just played it off but she noticed that he was getting more aggressive. Even when she said she had a boyfriend, the harassment didn’t stop.

She had to wipe away tears as she confided in Robert.

It was that nagging feeling in the back of his head. Robert just never fully trusted his boss. When he started to think back to some of the conversations and some of the comments his boss had shared during the earlier days, he could say that he was the type he liked to control women. Basically, he came off as a chauvinist.

Robert had heard similar stories back on Earth II when he spoke to some female friends. He had stories of men in top management soliciting favors from their female subordinates. He had heard about the text messaging and the unwarranted phone calls to female employees from their bosses. Even on his work assignments to different sectors, his female coworkers were always getting asked for their personal contact information from clients.

Ashley was just another one of those females who had been placed in those positions.

He asked her if she was still comfortable working at Solar Alliance. She said she wasn’t sure. Coming to work was starting to get uncomfortable. He told her that it would be best if she resigned. Trying to get a claim for harassment at work was always a hard thing and it would make everything worse. She could take her pay at the end of the month and hand in her resignation.

Ashley hugged Robert and thanked him for listening to her story. But Robert didn’t feel like he had done enough. A colleague was going to resign from her job because of a sleazy boss and all the best advice he could give was for her to quit.

It didn’t feel right

Next month, after getting her pay, Ashley handed in her resignation. Robert asked her she felt at the whole thing. She said she was sad she was leaving but she felt relieved at the same thing. It was like a weight had been taken off her back. But she thanked Robert again for listening to her. She said she felt better about confiding in him about the problems she was going through.

He stood by the exit pod as she stepped and flew back to Earth II.

Robert started to sour at his workplace. Solar Alliance didn’t feel like a place where he could carry on working. It was a good job that came with its issues including stress but it got him experience and it paid him well. But morally, it didn’t fit well with his psyche.

He would later resign from Solar Alliance in six months. During that time, his boss was also hitting on one of his female coworkers. She resigned a few weeks later before Robert quit. He had decided to go back to school to get an Analyst certificate.

As he stepped into the flight pod, Robert was unsure of what he was doing. But as he set his destination and slowly flew back to Earth II, he slowly felt the nagging thing in the back of his head disappear.

This is a short story from the collection “Conversations With Girls” which is now available on Amazon.