A growing personnel problem

Getting a receptionist has taken a real load off my mind. With so many urgent, throbbing matters to take care of in any given day, I can't afford to dedicate so much time to one issue.

Stories aren't the only thing I'm thinking about. Any business with employees has employee problems. For the fourth time this month, for instance, M. Christian reported late to work.

Now, I'm not big on time clocks. I find them demeaning, in fact. But the rest of the staff manages to arrive on time, so why can't he? (Amalgamated is staffed 24 hours a day, by the way. Better than 50 percent of our requests are of an emergency nature, making it imperative to have writers available to you, the horny client, at all hours.)

He's a big name in the industry and I was lucky to get him. I know that. I also know that he has many demands on his time outside of his life at Amalgamated. Does that explain why he skulks around here like the cops are after him? Or why he always looks like he invented something that would annihilate mankind and sold it for less than it was worth?

I don't know what to do with him. I'd say he just needs to get laid, but I don't think he'd be able to discard his paranoia long enough to enjoy a decent orgasm. Laney once offered to give him a blowjob while he wrote, but he just grunted at her. I myself suggested that some time between the breasts of his choice might be a therapeutic pastime. He sneered at me as if to say that he'd known breasts in his past but they had betrayed him such that he never wanted any more of them.

He's a tortured soul, but he won't talk about it. But I simply must address this tardiness issue. Wish me luck. I just hope I don't set off some trigger in his angst-ridden head that will cause him to tell me to take this job and shove it.