He managed to make it through the morning without biting anyone’s head off, and even managed to have a laugh with a few of the kitchen hands in this most recently acquired restaurant and that was possibly because it was run by the woman with the gelled back hair. She, apparently, had forgotten he was coming. It was wonderful.

‘You didn’t send me a reminder text,’ she said as she unlocked the glass door at the front of the building just after midday.

Hans saw no point in replying. Some people just got up your nose and that’s all there was to it. As he liked to think of himself as having a certain degree of self-honesty he assumed it might be a personality clash, so, the aim and test here, at least for himself, was to see how long he could last without wanting to shove the woman in a skip bin.

‘How are you,’ he said politely after she’d let him inside (it had taken a few moments). It looked like she wanted to scuttle back off to wherever her office was in this place.

‘I’m well, thank you Hans. I do have some catching up to do though, so if you don’t mind.’

‘I don’t mind. Let me know when you’re done.’ He tried not to scowl because, although he could think of nothing a restaurant manager would be doing in her office just after opening, he did want to look at the books after she’d completed whatever it was she needed to do. ‘I’ll just have a look at these improvements you said you’d made in the kitchen.’

‘That’s fine,’ she replied, which he really, really tried not to scowl at. Of course it was fine. He owned the fucking joint.

‘I appreciate your patience,’ he said instead, and wandered through to the heart of the building. A lovely big chest freezer sat in the corner of the kitchen. Hans decided that it might be a good sitty spot.

‘Are you guys getting anything out of this in the next half an hour,’ he asked the chef whose name, if he remembered correctly, was Fennel.

‘I fucking hope not,’ the chef replied in typical cheffy-chef-like fashion.

‘Do you mind?’

‘Do what you like,’ said the chef.

Hans popped himself up onto the lid of the freezer and watched them all working for a little while, to see if Nora’s “improvements” made any difference. This was around the time the kitchen-hands noticed his socks, and likely when they all started having a good time. It was the kid at the sink who said something first.

‘Do you like Homer Simpson,’ he asked, grinning.

Hans pursed his lips and tried not to smile. ‘Not really.’

‘Who got you those then,’ asked the kid. ‘Your wife?’

Brave kid, Hans. He held up his unringed fingers. ‘No, my sister. Personal questions, mate.’

The kid ducked his head, his face turning bright pink as he began scrubbing furiously at a chopping board. ‘Sorry.’

The chef glanced at Hans from the stove. ‘Don’t be a prick, Hans.’

Hans laughed. This was around the time he began telling the kitchen staff about how he’d started out in the restaurant industry.

‘…And when they realised I couldn’t cook for shit, which didn’t take long let me tell you, they decided instead to take advantage of my fabulous good looks and put me on the floor,’ he finished with a grin. One of the sous chefs smiled at him brightly and he tried not to give her a wink. The girls always said he had beautiful brown eyes, but flirting with the staff was simply not something he did if he could help it. It wasn’t fair on anyone.

It had been a good lunch, so far. Everyone worked smoothly together, the menu had not been changed from the one they’d decided worked best at all his restaurants, and even the kitchen-hands knew the fryers were always set to one hundred and eighty degrees.

Hallelujah, thought Hans.

Forty-five minutes had gone by though, and he still hadn’t seen the restaurant manager. What the fuck was she doing?

He thanked the chef politely and decided to go and find her. She wasn’t on the floor, she wasn’t at reception or the bar, and she wasn’t having a sneaky durry out the back. That left only one place. The woman must still be in the office.

Hans had dealt with people like this before. Once they hit a certain level, they seemed to decide their place was not dealing with the customers anymore, choosing instead to reward themselves by hiding away and keeping themselves entertained playing card games on the computer or doing something equally irritating that in no way contributed to the running of a restaurant.

It was a combination of arrogance and laziness, in Hans’ opinion. After all, whether they liked it or not, they were supposed to be “people people’ and part of that was actually dealing with people properly and showing everyone else (that being the staff) what they should be doing, not, and he really started getting angry now as he strode towards the office, thinking themselves all high and fucking mighty and better than everyone else. The real problem, and eventual outcome, would be that the manager became so removed from their staff, and so distant from the everyday workings of a business, they lost touch with what happened within the business itself, and that was when everything started to go downhill.

The office door was locked.

‘You are fucking kidding me,’ he muttered. There really was no excuse for this. Prep had likely started at ten a.m. if not earlier, and the manager would have (should have) been on site by then. Any “banking” or paperwork would be over and done with by this point, if it hadn’t been done the previous evening, and any excuse for the office being locked from the inside at this time of day would need to be a good one.

He didn’t bother knocking.

The one thing Hans always made sure he did when he purchased a joint, was to make sure he had a set of keys. In this case the previous owner had only one set for himself, and Hans had made sure, not only to get those for emergencies but to have two more sets cut, just on the off chance someone had lost them, or didn’t know who else might have put them in their pocket, forgotten about them and gone home. It happened quite a lot.

He didn’t usually bother telling the managers at the seven restaurants this and more often than not they were pleasantly surprised when he saved their arses. He didn’t do it for them though. As he’d always said, it was about making money, and no one could operate a place if they couldn’t get in.

He unlocked the door.

The Dora Nora Flora woman sat at her desk drinking a cup of coffee and eating what looked to be black forest cake with extra cherries. She did not look in the least bit remorseful, and even had the balls to raise an eyebrow as he shut the door carefully behind him.

‘I didn’t hear you knock,’ she said.

‘Hello,’ he replied. ‘You’re fired, who’s next in line.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ She put down her cup and stared at him. ‘What’s your reasoning for this?’

‘Never mind. I’ll figure it out myself. Get your purse, or your handbag or whatever it is you come to work with, and fuck off. We’re done.’

She didn’t smirk, but there seemed to be a hint of one. ‘Nobody knows how to do this. You need to give me more notice so I can find a replacement.’

‘I know how to sit around and drink coffee all day, and I know the correct time for when I should be on the floor and when I should be in the office, and I can do every single thing you can do and, more importantly, I can do it better,’ he replied. ‘So.’ He leant back against the door and folded his arms. ‘Give me a reason why you’re in here with the door locked doing nothing, and if it’s good enough I won’t fire you.’

There was silence for a short moment and he watched her face. It felt like the woman was considering her options. She looked like one of those people who thought, just because he was devastatingly handsome, which he was (of course) he was also possibly a little bit of a pushover, or dumb, or both, which he wasn’t (of course). She didn’t smell in the least bit concerned either, which proved to him who the stupid one could be.

‘I don’t need a reason,’ she said, ‘My reputation should be good enough, and the staff can run the restaurant perfectly well without me being in there all the time.’

He growled. ‘Then why are you working here?’

She looked at him properly then and finally something registered. Her eyes went wide, the little silver fork she’d been eating her cake with dropped to the carpeted floor with hardly a sound, followed soon after by the plate with the cake on it. Such a waste.

‘You’ve got ten minutes,’ he said and left the office. He tried not to cock his leg on the door as he walked out.

to be continued