Chapter 4The $15,000 Tab: How to Truly Cancel a Toxic Intern

I opened my phone and located the audio recordings I had saved last night.

I recorded them while standing outside the private dining room. I had originally intended to send them to the CEO to explain the situation, but they were going to be far more useful now.

In the recording, Tyler's voice was crystal clear: "Hilarious, she wants to date me? She wishes. I'm not gonna indulge her delusions!"

"In a minute, I’m ordering ten portions of the most expensive items on the menu..."

"You guys box up the leftovers, I'm making Clara pay the tab!"

I transferred the audio files to my laptop to back them up, then started drafting an email.

Not a resignation letter. A work report.

A report regarding the marketing department's recent budget overruns, the chaotic management of interns, and attempts by certain employees to commit corporate embezzlement via company dinners.

Half an hour later, the HR manager notified me to go to the conference room.

When I walked in, Tyler was sitting across from the CEO, Mr. Henderson, crying his eyes out.

Henderson was a balding man in his fifties who hated conflict and loved sweeping things under the rug.

Seeing me, Henderson frowned. "Clara, what is going on? A simple team dinner, how did it turn into this mess?"

Tyler jumped in, "Mr. Henderson, you have to help me! Manager Clara is bullying me! she intentionally set a trap to screw us over, making every single one of us lose a ton of money! And... and she even..."

He feigned embarrassment, biting his lip.

Henderson tapped the table impatiently. "And what?"

"She sexually harassed me!"

The conference room went dead silent.

Henderson's face instantly darkened.

In the corporate world, financial disputes are one thing, but the moment the words "sexual harassment" are uttered, a hard line has been crossed.

"Clara, is this true?" Henderson stared at me.

I pulled out a chair, sat down, and looked him in the eye. "No."

"You're lying!"

Tyler pulled up a few screenshots on his phone and handed them to Henderson. "Look, Mr. Henderson, these are her daily chat logs! Texting me late at night, insisting on driving me home! When I refused, she started making my life miserable at work!"

Henderson took the phone. His frown deepened.

I could guess exactly what those texts were.

Just standard late-night overtime texts: "Did you make it home safe?" or "I need that proposal on my desk first thing tomorrow."

But clipped out of context by someone with an agenda, these normal check-ins and work demands could easily be twisted.

"Clara, how do you explain this?" Henderson pushed the phone toward me.

I glanced at it.

Just as I thought.

It only showed the fragments of me asking "Where are you?" and "Do you want me to give you a ride?", completely deleting the voice memos right before them where he whined, "Manager Clara, I can't get an Uber and I'm so scared."

"Out of context," I said. "Mr. Henderson, you can check the full chat history."

"I deleted it!" Tyler yelled. "Those gross messages, I felt dirty just keeping them! Thank god I had the presence of mind to take screenshots!"

"Playing the 'dead men tell no tales' card, huh?" I looked at Tyler.

Tyler avoided my gaze, shouting even louder at Henderson. "Mr. Henderson, even though I'm a guy, I still care about my reputation. If I wasn't pushed to the brink, why would I expose this? Now the whole department knows what kind of person she is, how am I supposed to work here?"

Henderson sighed, taking off his glasses to clean them.

"Clara, regardless of what happened, you really handled last night's dinner poorly. You're the leader, you need to be forgiving. Tyler is new, he doesn't know any better, you need to cut him some slack."

Exactly as I expected. Sweeping it under the rug.

"So, what are you proposing, Mr. Henderson?"