"Hello everyone, welcome to the branch. I'm John, nice to meet you." He shook hands with them and went through the normal procedure of getting them to give up on the name confusion.

The CEO turned to him and looked at his watch. At the turn of the hour, he spoke. "Well hopefully your boss will show up soon. We need to discuss this branch and their projects." John nodded. "I'm sorry about this, we just had a meeting with two clients, he is most likely just making sure that everyone is informed of the new projects."

The CEO continued at this. "Why don't you tell me about what you know so far." John pulled out his notebooks. "I can actually give you all a copy of everything if you need it. We met with one client for a second meeting, got the updates for the plan and will get the updated drawings back to them on Monday and then we met with a completely new client who is interested in a very large, very complicated workshop and studio. We offered to get the drawings done in one month if he would give us a week after that to get the permits and go through regulations." Management looked over the paperwork. "This is very good, this will bring a lot of good income from this branch. None of the clients had issues with the deadlines?" The CEO asked. John shook his head. "No, they were very understanding and seemed to appreciate that we were being thorough and honest, rather than promising things before they could be done." They all seemed happy with his answer. As they started to put the papers away and ask another question, John's boss came in and sat down.

"Hello everyone, thank you for coming. Today I wanted to bring up a pressing matter. We had two meetings today with clients that left the conference room very upset about what we promised them. During both meetings, I recommended a time frame in which we could get the project done for them and then Jones here spoke up and pushed the deadline back, much to their disappointment. I gave him an official warning after the first meeting and before the next and yet he still spoke up and pushed the deadline back an entire month." He spoke as if he was delivering an argument at a debate club. "Because of this, I believe we have plenty of reason to dismiss him from work. He has been very difficult to manage so far."

They all looked at him. John swallowed. The CEO turned to John, opening up his laptop and typing something in as he asked John's boss his questions. "Why do you have Jay sit in on the meetings?" His boss hesitated, seemingly surprised that they didn't just fire John on a whim. "I... well.. he has a team of people that get their information from him. I used to give them the information from meetings and then they decided not to take it unless it was from Jonas. I tried for a while not to let Jonas into the meetings, but all of the other employees seem to have some weird obsession with him and threatened a strike if he wasn't present."

The CEO raised his eyebrows. "Why don't we ask someone from the office about this obsession of theirs. He looked through the employee roster on his laptop. "How about Claire Pearson? She is the other team lead." He pressed a button on the conference phones and asked someone to get Claire in here.

She walked in with a concerned look on her face. She probably thought she was being fired. The CEO spoke up before she could start trying to beg forgiveness or something. "We were just talking about Jay here and why he sits in on meetings. Do you know anything about this?"

Relief washed over her face. She still seemed apprehensive about speaking badly of her boss in front of her boss, but when she saw the looks on the managers' faces she realized this was going to be a rare opportunity.

"Before Jeremy came along, it would be me at the meetings sometimes. Other times the talks with clients would go on without the representation of the team. When it was just me or nobody, we would always find ourselves with impossible deadlines and we would often find out weeks after the meeting took place, leaving us with even less time. Clients got angry and would take it out on our boss and then he would take it out on us. If we spoke up about it, he would threaten our jobs and get very angry so everyone was scared to talk. Then, Jeremy came along. He spoke up and joined a meeting and somehow talked him down and didn't get fired. After this everyone went to our manager, whoever they were, and begged to be a part of Jeremy's team. Everyone else was worried about terrible deadlines, but Jeremy managed to get perfect deadlines for his team. No one got transferred at first because Jeremy apparently wasn't even a team lead, just a very bold team member. Eventually after more begging, Jeremy was given his own team, and I was given the other. My team still begged to be on his team with the better deadlines, until Jeremy offered to negotiate at the meetings for me. He spoke up for my team and his and then gave us incredibly detailed reports with all the information we needed. He always kept in contact with everyone on the team so that he had a good idea of how long something would take and would even take some people into a meeting with him if he needed their advice for negotiation. Apparently, in the most recent meeting, Jeremy brought in our lead architect who was able to explain that it would take us longer due to the detail in many pieces of the structure." They all nodded, her story matching what they had experienced so far. "Thank you Claire, I think we have all that we need."

Half an hour of argument turned to another half an hour of yelling until John's boss, or apparently ex-boss, was dragged from the building. His stuff was sent to him in a box. John was still in shock. Management had pulled up human resources complaints and saw the massive amount against his boss and the recommendations for John. They had gone through client satisfaction surveys and showed the large increase ever since John started attending the meetings. His boss no longer had a leg to stand on.

John was still practically sleepwalking as he started to unload his things onto his old boss's desk. They had given him his boss's job. They had toyed with the idea of hiring someone from outside the firm, until the CEO recommended they just go ask John's coworkers while he stayed in the meeting room. It was unanimous. Everyone vehemently agreed that he should be the new manager. He sat down at his desk and was finally snapped into reality when he saw Leon standing in the door.

"I was about to stop you from getting that promotion because I thought you were misusing your... never mind." He shook his head. "All that matters is that I met your boss, I was in a meeting with you, and I talked with your coworkers. You earned that promotion fair and square." He shook John's hand and smiled.

"Now that you went through something as emotionally charged as that without accidentally doing anything, I am less worried about you hurting someone. I still want you to go back to my house, but I will let you finish up here first, and you can feel free to work from my home too. I will still be hanging around to keep an eye on you though." Leon said, stepping out of the room and chatting with one of the architects about her beautiful drawings.

John almost forgot about Leon and his mysterious name for the rest of the day. Once management left, everyone threw him a party. He celebrated with them and then gave them the rest of the day off, cleaning up the party on his own. He finished up right around leaving time and then was about to head home when he bumped into Leon again. "Right. So should I follow you or just leave my car here?" He asked Leon, he did kind of want to ride in Leon's car again.

Leon chuckled. "I took your car and dropped it off at your house already, you will ride with me." John frowned. "How?" Leon patted his back and walked towards his car with John. "You left your keys on your desk, I had a friend drive me back here." He handed John his keys and John remembered how he had set them on his desk along with his box of belongings before Leon had walked in.

"When we get to my house I will explain as much as I can and then tomorrow we will go to the hearing." John was about to protest about work, but Leon continued. "Don't worry, tell them you are out with a client, since you are. I can give them proof. You can stay in contact with your team on your laptop while we aren't busy. You will still be working more than your old boss anyway.

This was all going to take some getting used to