Alice arrived late for the third time that week. Just my luck, she thought, as she saw the boss talking to the receptionist. She saw him glance at his watch, but to her surprise, he seemed to ignore her. She hurried on up to the office.
Dan heard the door opening and automatically looked at his watch and then towards the door. Noticing it was the new girl, a blush rose up. He quickly lowered his glance and continued his previous conversation.
The office was in pandemonium as everything was behind schedule for the Children’s Christmas Party. Alice redeemed herself by offering to stay late and help out with the colouring sheets packs.
Everything had to be right for tomorrow. It was the first year that Dan had been in charge since his Dad retired, he couldn’t let the firm down. He worked later than usual to make sure that there was nothing that could go wrong.
Alice would have been in tears if her anger hadn’t been so focussed on the Gestetner Duplicator. She swore at it as it gobbled up yet another one of the copies into its internal workings. It was all she could do to stop herself kicking the damn thing.
Dan overheard her profanities as he was on his way out, and went to investigate.
“Is Gessie giving you a hard time?” he asked.
Alice extricated herself from the duplicator’s inners. Her hands and clothes were smeared with printing ink.
Dan took his coat off.
“Here, let me help, Gessie and I are old friends. My first job was doing all the printing for the firm.” He knew what he was doing and that confidence helped him overcome his shyness to speak to her.
Alice realised that the boss wasn’t so bad after all. He even gave her a lift home.
The day of the staff Christmas party was always the biggest event in the firm’s calendar. Everyone had to be someone’s secret Santa. There was a limit of £5.00 set so nobody would go overboard. Names were pulled out of a hat, Alice picked out Dan’s name and Dan picked out Alice’s.
With a £5.00 limit, Dan could not possible give her a gift that would show Alice how much he liked her.
Alice was finding it difficult to buy a present for a man who seemed to have it all.
Father Christmas pulled the presents out of his sack and called up the staff members one by one. Alice was baffled with her gift of 100 plastic gloves. They just had to have some significance. She looked around the room trying to figure out who her secret Santa was.
Dan was also surprised. He had been given a china mug with “The Boss is in” on it. Everybody called him Dan, as they had known him all their lives, except… The Disco music started. Dan danced with all the female staff deliberately leaving the last dance for Alice.
