Chapter Text
Alex slammed his office door behind him and growled in frustration. Why couldn’t he ever find a decent assistant? It wasn’t like he was that high maintenance of a boss; he only asked as much as he thought was reasonable. This one had seemed to be working out, but of course something had to go wrong. She had double booked him to meet with an important shareholder that was considering backing out and the chairman of the board because she hadn't written one of them down and had forgotten.
So, there Alex had been, deep into a meeting with the shareholder, Mr. Jameson, when the chairman had walked in. Of course, seeing the disorder had completely ruined the progress he was making with Jameson, and now it was his head on the block for the financial loss. The chairman could've handled the situation better, but Alex wasn’t naive, he knew it would all be on him.
Sometimes he wondered why he even bothered to stay with this company. Sure, he was the CEO, it was good money, and provided him with the extravagant lifestyle that he so enjoyed, but sometimes he wasn’t sure it was worth all of the stress. Though, having a competent assistant would go a long way in easing that frustration.
Alex walked over to his desk and sat down, pushing his hands into his hair. This was the fourth assistant in a row that he had had to fire because they fucked up. The last good assistant he’d had was George and, after three years, he had understood when the man had felt the need to move on to bigger and better things. He understood that being an assistant was never really anyone’s end goal job and he wanted George to thrive, not stay and feel stuck. As a gesture of goodwill, Alex had gladly written him a letter of recommendation with astounding reviews that had finally helped his former assistant get into his dream job. And Alex was happy for him. Mostly.
In the two years since, Alex had employed six new assistants. The first one was okay, but just hadn’t been the right fit for the job so, after two months, he had transferred over to the CFO’s assistant and seemed to be thriving. The second assistant had been great, over a period of nine months not a single thing had gone wrong, but then she had, of all the stupid ideas, made a move on Alex. He had tried to let her down easy, hoping she would still stay, but to say she didn’t take the rejection well was an understatement. The next day when Alex walked into the office her desk was completely empty, as if she had never been there in the first place. He almost wished that the other four had done something as foolish. Instead, over a period of only eleven months, he had gone through four assistants as they all made such severe errors that he had fired them on the spot. He was so beyond done with incompetent fools.
Alex turned to his computer and decided to skim through the most recently received resumes. He had never stopped accepting new resumes after the second assistant’s absence had left him without one for two weeks. He had decided that if he had an assistant that, after a year, still seemed to be doing well he would close the job opening.
The first few resumes were a complete bust, not a single one had the credentials he had listed as the bare minimum. It was like people only saw the word “assistant” and assumed there was nothing to it. But Alex knew, from his own days as an executive assistant, that it was much more work than some believed. That was the only reason he had listed experience as one of the credentials, he didn’t want someone coming in with low work expectations, only to be met with the reality of a truly challenging position.
After reviewing nearly seventy resumes, he had printed a pile of twelve he was interested in interviewing. The interview was always the most important part for him. A person could have a resume a mile long with impressive credentials, but none of that mattered if there was no chemistry. His assistant was the person he worked most closely with, it was vital for them to be able to communicate well.
With the resumes now printed, he picked up the one on top and dialed the listed phone number, it was answered after just two rings.
“Hello, this is Morgan.” A voice spoke on the other line.
“Hello, Morgan, I’m calling from Procso Corporations in response to the resume you submitted. Are you still interested in the Executive Assistant position?” Alex flowed through his standard introduction, right into business. Always better to get that question out of the way first rather than waste time.
“Oh, yeah. Yes, definitely. I would love to talk about the Assistant position,” the voice, Morgan, answered with excitement.
Alex smiled a little, it wasn’t often that he got a prospective hire that had this much enthusiasm for the job. Yeah, there were always the fans of the company who were excited about potentially working at Procso. But Morgan seemed genuinely excited about the prospect of the position as well. “Fantastic. I would love to schedule an interview as soon as possible. I know it is short notice, but would you have any availability tomorrow by chance?”
“Coincidentally, my day is wide open tomorrow. Name a time and a place and I’ll be there.” Morgan’s excitement on the other line was almost contagious.
Alex held himself together though, forcing himself to maintain his professionalism. “Would noon work?”
“Noon is great.”
“Great. I assume you know how to find the building. When you get to the front desk, give them my name and they’ll tell you where to go from there. Do you have any questions for me?”
“Oh, um, you didn’t give me your name, actually,” Morgan laughed awkwardly.
“Oh,” Alex was mildly confused at the question, but answered it anyway. “I assumed it was obvious. I’m Alex, the Chief Executive Officer, the one you would be working for, Do you have any other questions I can help you with?”
“You–You’re h–I mean, he’s–Y-You’re Alex? I just kinda thought that you would have had people that do this kind of thing for you. Not–not that you can’t do it yourself, I-I just thought that–well, you’re just, like, the CEO–which you obviously know–usually there are other people that do these things for people like you. That came out wrong, I didn’t mean people like you, like in a bad way, just like people who are in positions of power. Which isn’t so say that–you know what, nevermind. I should stop rambling before you change your mind. Anyway, no, I don’t have any other questions.”
Despite himself, Alex was grinning, the fact that he was having this effect was rather flattering. He knew he was an attractive man, but he didn’t often get this sort of reaction from people over the phone. “I will see you tomorrow at noon, Morgan.”
“Tomorrow,” he confirmed.
Alex hung up the phone and shook his head a little bit. This would certainly be an interesting interview. He picked up the other resumes and started to dial the next number, but halfway through he set the phone back down. He knew it was ridiculous, but for some reason he was confident that he wouldn’t need to interview anyone else.
****
Morgan was still staring at the phone, he couldn’t believe that he had just spoken with the CEO of Procso Corporations. Alex was a true visionary, the way he talked about the world and the future he imagined inspired people. Morgan had been hardcore crushing on the devastatingly handsome man since he had first seen him in an interview on XYZ News. When he had applied for the position as the Executive Assistant to the CEO, he hadn’t actually expected to get so much as a phone call.
Tomorrow he was going to come face to face with Alex and he had to not make a fool of himself. He still couldn’t believe the way that he had rambled on like an idiot during the phone call and there would be no repeats of that tomorrow. The best thing he could do to make sure he was ready for tomorrow, he decided, was to call it an early night and get plenty of rest. After setting three alarms (just in case) and triple checking all of those alarms, he settled into bed and dozed off into a restful sleep.