“The roses for Mrs. Anglethorpe are here, and I think you better take a look at them,” the doorman said.
She dropped her coat on her desk and followed him into the lobby. An annoyed-looking deliveryman stood at the reception desk, on which rested an enormous vase of white roses.
Miranda gasped. She had ordered the flowers herself, specifying peach-colored roses and then reconfirming the color yesterday. Mrs. A’s husband sent her the same shade of roses every year on her birthday because his nickname for her was Peaches. The gift would be ruined if the wrong color had been delivered.
“There must be some mix-up,” she said as she hurried over.
The deliveryman pulled a wrinkled sheet of pink paper out of his back pocket and checked it. “Says here the white roses are for Mrs. Anglethorpe at the Pinnacle.”
Miranda took the delivery order to read it herself. The word peach had been crossed out and amended to white.
“I’ll call your boss and straighten this out,” Miranda said with an apologetic smile. “In the meantime, I’m afraid you’re going to have to take these back and bring peach-colored roses.” She hoped the florist had them. It wasn’t a high demand color, so it often had to be specially ordered. She foresaw a whole series of phone calls ahead of her as she tried to locate the proper colored flowers.
The deliveryman picked up the vase with ill-concealed annoyance. “Joe ain’t going to be happy.”
Maybe not, but Mr. and Mrs. Anglethorpe were her clients, so she was far more concerned about them. As she dashed back to her office, she worried about how much time the new delivery would take.
She was surprised by the error, because she used Richmond Florals regularly and Joe had never gotten anything wrong before. Dialing the number, she checked the order again, noticing that there was handwriting at the bottom. Because hers was the third page of a three-part form, the note was too faint to read.
Joe himself picked up. “Miranda, I just heard from my driver that you sent back the white roses. What’s going on over there? You and Orin can’t make up your minds?”
“Orin?” Miranda was too confused to be diplomatic.
“He called yesterday afternoon to change the order from peach roses to white. I had to steal them from some wedding centerpieces I’m working on.”
Miranda sat down hard. This was sabotage of the worst kind. Orin must be out-of-his-mind furious about yesterday’s meeting if he was willing to upset a client to make Miranda look bad.
“I wrote a note at the bottom of the order,” Joe said. “Didn’t you see it?”
“It didn’t come through on the copy.” She would have to take a hit on this one. “Bill me for both bouquets, but please tell me you have peach roses to send over ASAP.” She tried to inject a smile into her voice, even as she shuddered at how big a chunk the extra flower charge would carve out of her paycheck. Any mistakes made in orders had to be absorbed by Orin’s employees so her boss could keep his profits high.
“No problem with that. I already had the peach ordered, so they’re here.” The slight edge of exasperation in Joe’s voice was gone. “I won’t charge you for the white roses because I can use them for the wedding flowers. But I’ll have to bill you for two deliveries.”
“Of course.” Miranda could handle that. She debated a moment about her next statement, but she couldn’t be at the Pinnacle twenty-four/seven, so it needed to be said. “The next time Orin changes an order I’ve placed, would you just drop me an e-mail? That way we can avoid future confusion.”
“Sure.” He sounded puzzled, but Miranda didn’t care. Orin had crossed the line on this one.
After she hung up, she braced her elbows on her desk and massaged her temples. The amount of damage Orin could do if he kept this up was mind-blowing. She couldn’t double-check every order she placed with every vendor she worked with, and she certainly couldn’t meet every delivery that came in.
She opened her desk drawer and pulled out the cow-spotted stress ball Dennis had given her for Christmas, saying it would remind her of the farm. It was surprising how often she used it these days. She clenched her fist around it and squeezed.
When she’d applied for the position at the Pinnacle, she’d heard that Orin was difficult to work for, but this went beyond that.
She didn’t understand why he had a problem with her. She was good at her job, which should reflect well on him as the owner of the concierge service. Yet he seemed to resent the fact that certain residents came to her on a regular basis rather than routing their requests through him. It wasn’t uncommon that people got to know and trust a particular concierge. She wondered if some of the clients who now worked only with her might have once dealt with Orin.
She was going to have to find another job sooner than she’d expected. And it wouldn’t be easy without a reference from her boss. She wouldn’t go to her clients directly for references, but maybe she could tap some colleagues.
She would have to be careful in her job search. The concierge community was tight knit. A lot of back-scratching and favor trading went on, and Orin was well connected.
As the complexities of her situation loomed large, she crushed the ball until her nails dug into her palm. Maybe she should just resign from the Pinnacle now to cut her losses. She could find temporary work at a lower tier hotel. It meant giving up on her dream job at the new building, but it might be better than second-guessing everything she did here.