Dressing Down: Ch.1: Under New Management

     He never really liked coming here. Too chaotic, not enough productivity, bad management, etc.

     He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose as he heard a loud crash come from inside the building and decided to just get this meeting over with so he could go back home where all the sane people lived. 

     Lucifer put his hand on the little brass door handle and just when he was about to pull it open, the door swung out as two people ran through it.

     The heavy metalic red door missed him by an inch as it banged hard off of the concrete wall. He glared furiously at the two idiot employees ready to reprimand them for their lack of tact, but they were already in a heated screaming match themselves. Well, at least they had decided to bring their argument outside instead of in the office.

     "I'm telling you, this fabric won't work!! We're supposed to be putting out prom dresses, not a line of dish rags!!",The blonde one screamed. Oh God..She was still here..?

     Lucifer didn't think he could take her high pitched scratchy wailing all day. He could already feel the resulting anurism from having to hear her scream about trashy celebrities nobody even cared about every waking second...Ugh.

     The other man he didn't recognize though. New employee?

     "Dish rags?! Maybe you should a good look at your last summer line. That should give you a good idea of what dish rags look like!!",A large dark haired man, with his hair stuck up in small braids yelled back at the whiny blonde. 

     Lucifer nodded to himself. All those disgusting sheer tops...Dish rags was right.

     He quickly stepped through the door as the blonde swelled with anger, her face turning an embarrassing shade of red, and closed it quietly behind him.

     Well. Nobody seemed to know how first impressions were supposed to work around here.

     He stepped up to the receptionists desk, a small black haired girl with colored streaks in it and a nyan cat T shirt. She was talking animatedly into a little black headset as she tapped away on her keyboard. 

     "Excuse me miss, Could you tell Mr. Indie I've come for our appointment?",He asked politely, the girl didn't seem to have heard him.

     Okay..

     He repeated himself a bit louder this time.

    "EXCUSE ME."

     The girl jumped and snatched her headset off by accident and looked up at him with startled brown eyes. "Oh, I'm sorry sir. I didn't see you there!",She said with a bright smile. 

     Lucifer could practically feel the stress knot forming between his shoulder blades. 

     "I-..It's fine. Just tell Mr. Indie I'm here."

     The peppy receptionist nodded in affirmation and pulled the little office phone off of the receiver. She punched in a couple of numbers and waited.

     Lucifer waited for a couple of seconds until a loud voice came yelling through the receiver. "WHAT? WHAT DO YOU WANT?"

     He had almost forgotten how much of a temper this guy had, it almost rivaled his own but at least Lucifer knew how to keep his in check. Jeb Indie wore his wrath like cologne. 

     "Hi, Indie!!",The receptionist girl squealed into the phone,"Someone is here to see you!!"

     She listened intently with a carefree look for a second as more yelling came through the phone. "He says, go away."

     Lucifer snatched the phone out of the spacey girls hands and lifted it to his ear calmly. 

     "Mr. Indie. I think we had an appointment today.",Lucifer spoke calmly into the receiver.

     There was the sound of glass breaking, possibly a dropped coffee mug, and a hurried whisper of 'pick that up now!' before,"I- I'm sorry Sir. I think there's been a misunderstanding, Please come right in-"

     "I accept the apology, now if you'd like to keep your company I expect you and your employees in the conference room right now.",Lucifer said coldly, before he slammed the receiver back into the craddle. 

     The receptionist girl looked up at him with wide eyes. 

     "Where is your board room?",Lucifer asked as he pulled out his BlackBerry to check the time. Damn them all, they were a whole five minutes behind schedule.

     "Uh..Down the hall, third door to the right."

____________________________________________________________________

     Five minutes later (and five more minutes behind, which put them a full ten minutes late.) all employees were all gathered around the small round table. Lucifer wasn't exactly paying attention to them as they filed into the small stuffy room, he was concentrating more on keeping his blood pressure down..

     Maybe that was how he missed two more new faces stepping into the conference room behind the usuals, that he still hadn't bothered to learn their names. 

     Only when they were all sitting down around him with himself at the head of the table did he notice. The first being a ditsy blonde in a cowboy hat who was talking wildly over something pretentious with the other ditsier blonde. Fuck, now there was two of her..

     The other was sitting right beside him, jotting things down on a note pad. 

     Well, at least someone got their work done around here. God knew this place could use a little bit of production every once in a while.

     God knew his own company could use a bit more. Not that Divine Designs was stagnant, just lagging a little behind. 

     He glanced over the note pad curiously, to find the man adding up prices on costly fabrics, and supplies by hand. Wow, so this company really did spend more than they made every year just like he'd suspected. 

     Well, he'd see what he could do about that.

     "Excuse me. Can I see this for a second.",He said quietly as he pulled the notepad towards himself. The other man looked up as if surprised to be addressed with polite intentions, and relented the notepad with a small nod. 

     Damn, it was worse than he'd thought.

     10,000 on bolts of fabric and thread alone. 

     20,000 on broken machinery. (Two sowing machines, an industrial sized printer, two copy machines, and so forth. How the fuck do you even break a magazine printer?! Not with paper jams that's for sure..)

     2,000 on supplies (Extra needles and pins, spindles, ribbon, lace, ink, dyes, all that kind of thing.) 

     And even more on useless junk. 

     Why does a company of fashion designers and tailors need all this stuff?

     Lucifer exhaled heavily and tried to keep his temper.

     The man beside him tentatively pulled the little note book back and glanced over the list. He almost looked depressed by the outrageous prices and items.

     "Every time I balance the books it always gets worse and worse.",The other man groaned as he put his head in his hands.

     "How long has this been going on?",Lucifer asked slowly, he was sure he really didn't want to know but he needed to. Even if it gave him a fucking migraine..

     The man looked up at him with calm ocean blue eyes. 

     "Years, I guess.",He said. Some of his honey colored hair fell into his eyes and he tucked the loose strands behind his ear with nimble fingers,"I haven't been here long enough to figure it out."

     Lucifer's jaw hardened. Of course. Years.

     "This is absolutely ridiculous." 

     "I couldn't agree more."

____________________________________________________________________

     All through out the remainder of the conference, Lucifer was becoming more and more confused over exactly how MyMusical Fashion was hemorrhaging so much money over so little actual supplies, and much stupid junk.

     His only tie to sanity right now seemed to be the levelheaded intern, which he'd learned was named Melvin, and the head of the metalhead trends department. Emmett right? Right.

     "Can anyone, anyone at all, tell me why the fuck so little is going into production and so much into luxury items. This is a fashion corporation, not a spa.",Lucifer said out from between clenched teeth,"You know what..I demand you show me your current issue. I want to know what you've been doing here."

     The annoying head of the teen fashion department, Jamie, stood up and walked to the filing cabinet by the door. She pulled a thick leather folder out and handed it down the line to Melvin.

     Melvin placed the folder in front of Lucifer who opened it with a flourish. He felt a small sense of pride swell in his chest as he flipped through the pages. Each design was the perfect mix of each designers special talents, all exquisitely made, and accessorized. 

     There was just one problem.

     Only half the book had been filled. A whole fifty pages would be missing in the 2013 Fall catalogue if they couldn't pull off at least 100 more designs by the 27th of September. The pride balloon instantly popped.

     Lucifer slammed the book down, and stood up out of his chair. "Where's the rest of it." 

     The staff looked up at him with bored expressions. 

     The R&B designer, Curtis, spoke up then. "There ain't no more."

     "And why not?",Lucifer ground out, his voice dangerously low.

     "Because everyone's more focused on each other's designs than their own.",Melvin muttered under his breath. He was currently scribbling something down on his notepad. Probably taking notes for his boss. 

     Lucifer took notice of the young intern. He seemed to be the voice of reason here, and it seemed nobody was caring to listen. Maybe he just wasn't assertive enough for that. He was just an intern after all.

     Suddenly an idea came to Lucifer. 

     "I think something needs to be done here.",He said as he sat back down in his chair and pushed himself up to the table,"I propose that we make a couple of staff changes, a trade if you will."

     Jeb Indie leaned forward in his seat, interested in what Lucifer had to say,"I'm listening."

     "I'll give you one my best, for one of yours, how does that sound?"

     Jeb leaned back in his seat looking thoughtful for a moment. "Hmm..I think that could be arranged."

     "Good. Because you really have no choice.",Lucifer said as he looked around the table as if summing each of them up in turn, even though he'd already made his choice.

     "Alright, here's what we're going to do. I'll let you have my personal assistant, Kate. She's good at balancing prices, she's good with people, she'll know what she's doing around here.",Lucifer waited for this to sink in before going on,"That will mean I'd need a new assistant. Someone who's knows how do their job right and take an order when their told.."

     All eyes fell on Melvin who was still taking notes, and not seeing a single thing happening around him.