Bright Lights

Chapter 5: First impressions

I sat down at my cubicle, looking at how bland it looked. After work, I would need to go to the nearest office depot. My schedule said I had a staff meeting in twenty minutes, so I started walking over there. I sat down at a seat that was in the middle. Only one other person was there, and he was looking at Facebook on his laptop. Slowly, people started coming in, and the ten other seats were filled. I pulled out my laptop, doing what other people were doing. I put my phone on silent, and opened a new Pages document. We had two minutes left before the meeting started. Mr Grinstone walked in and stood near the projected board. The small talk and chatter stopped. 

"Hello everyone. Today I would like to welcome the newest member of the investments team at Gremland Investments. Everyone meet Laurel Jibbins." Everyone turned their heads and looked at me. This one guy whistled, and the others laughed. I took that as a compliment and smiled at them. Mr. Grinstone cleared his throat. The laughter stopped. 

"Anyways, I hope you treat her all with respect instead of acting like sick perverts."

This guy laughed at the guys who were whistling. I laughed too.

"Please help her get settled in and feel comfortable. Anyways, lets get down to it. Investment ranks have been abnormally low this year, not only because of lack of stocks, but also because of the market. We will need to promote our investment bank to keep our plans afloat. Does anyone have any constructive ideas we could work with?"

No one spoke. I swear, you could hear a pin drop. But this was a good chance for a great first impression.

"Mr. Grinstone?"

"Yes Laurel?"

"I think a good way to promote investments throughout our company is to find a way to get our stock market price to come back up, which we can do by creating something that can work, maybe a program, that could really increase trade throughout us and different companies."

Everyone looked at me. 

"Wow. Impressive. I think that is a great idea." Mr. Grinstone said. "We should be bringing ideas like this to the table everyday."

ten minutes later, the meeting was over. And this time, I think I made a great first impression.