REDEMPTION

Chapter 4: Line in the sand

Mondays were a pain in the neck.

Hunched over the desk in her dingy little office Sierra was hard at work sifting through the dozens of submissions still littering the small room. This is why she had spent thousands of pounds, money the gallery could ill afford, on revamping the website. All that effort was for naught however, people still completely ignored the guidelines and sent in submissions by hand.

Sierra was resigned to that fact now, artists were notoriously difficult to deal with, and getting them to follow simple instructions was nigh on impossible. Which was why, even after having an active website with clear and succinct directions regarding how to make submissions for portfolio reviews, she still had to spend an inordinate amount of time every Monday morning reading through and rejecting as many submissions as she could in addition to checking the online ones as well.

Any normal sane person would just make a slush pile and feed the damn things to the paper shredder, but Sierra being the OCD freak that she was needed to go through this mountain of fluff just to make sure she didn't miss a diamond in the rough. Plus she knew these faceless people put their heart and soul into their work, and she felt guilty for discarding submissions without at least giving them a once over. She was yet to find her diamond in the rough this way however, much to her everlasting disappointment.

"Here's your coffee,"

Sierra looked up. Standing before her, looking just about as useless as she often acted with a supremely bored expression on her long face was her so called assistant Jeanine, Jenny to those unlucky enough to know her.

At barely ten in the morning Jenny somehow managed to look as if she had been working all day. Her face sour, pinched and devoid of any colour, save for the clashing black eyeliner and purple lipstick, raccoon chic at its worst.

The blonde girl had a habit of acting as if  work was beneath her, unfortunately Sierra couldn't fire her. Jenny was the only daughter of some family friend of the owners, and within the halls of "The Prentice Jones Gallery" family connections were all that really mattered.

Biting back a sharp retort Sierra slowly looked Jenny up and down, this morning she resembled an anime character, in a tight mini skirt, thigh high boots and a hello kitty tank top.

"I thought I told you to dress properly when you came in to work,"

Looking discomfited Jenny nevertheless raised her chin defiantly. At a rebellious 17 she had not completely learned the importance of keeping her opinions to herself in the workplace. The girl had proven herself to be quite a glutton for punishment thus far. Sierra disliked laying down the law, but she was more than capable of doing exactly that when occasion called for it.

And with Jenny and her surly moods it often did.

"I was late coming in. The tube was packed and I missed my first train. I would have missed the second one too if I had taken the time to change into my dried up old prune costume for the day,"

Sierra completely ignored that ill disguised barb, she was more than comfortable in the clothes she wore to the office, her buttoned up white shirt and figure hugging black knee length pencil skirt were both comfortable and elegant, not to mention highly professional. One had to present a certain image in an art gallery, and looking like the sluttier version of Hannah Montana was not it.

"That isn't my problem," Sierra drawled in her most no nonsense tone, "I told you last week that I expect you to look the part when you come to work. This isn't a curry shop, so if you want to continue working here you have to dress like a receptionist at an art gallery and not a homeless person. Do I make myself clear?"