Chapter 129: The Hughes Family Causes Trouble? Explain It in Jail!
What could Catherine do?
Was she planning to bring over the Windsor family's entire collection for the exhibition?
If the Windsor family was willing to help out, the exhibition problem could indeed be easily solved.
"If the Windsor family's paintings are sent over, there should be enough time. I just don't know how many of Dominic's works the Windsor family has."
Catherine shook her head, rejecting this suggestion: "No need to get paintings from the Windsor family. There are less than 130 of Dominic's works in all of Imperia City."
"Then what are you planning to do?"
Catherine sketched and wrote, and quickly handed the new gallery design to Elijah.
"Go set up the exhibition. I'll handle the materials. Workers' wages will be tripled for today, with overtime pay calculated separately."
The original exhibition design was done by a professional team the gallery had hired at great expense. With Catherine's modifications, the overall style was elevated to a whole new level!
"Your design is absolutely amazing! With your simple modifications to the original, you've made the design so much more outstanding - it's simply brilliant! Fantastic!"
Was this the backup plan Catherine mentioned?
Elijah's heart was about to jump out with excitement!
Catherine casually tucked her hair behind her ear and said calmly: "The gallery has lost half its employees, suppliers suddenly stopped cooperating - as the manager, explain this."
The smile on Elijah's face immediately froze.
When Catherine walked into the gallery earlier, she hadn't looked around, and Elijah had even removed the employee attendance records from the past few days, worried Catherine would find out.
He never expected Catherine to discover it anyway!
Under Catherine's questioning gaze, Elijah wiped his sweat and said indignantly: "Ms. Windsor, those employees were poached by the Hughes family's newly opened gallery!"
If the employees hadn't been poached, some of the resident artists weren't also waiting to see what happens, and suppliers hadn't suddenly announced they were stopping cooperation, tomorrow's exhibition wouldn't be in such a bad situation.
"Poached?"
"Yes, one of our gallery's senior managers, Jennifer Phillips, left with all her subordinates."
This kind of group resignation wasn't uncommon, but that exhibition happened to be managed by the team that left!
Elijah got angry just thinking about it.
"Jennifer went too far. She knew perfectly well that our gallery spent a lot of money on this exhibition and invited many professional media people. The upfront investment was huge. If we can't complete it due to unexpected circumstances, our gallery will definitely be overshadowed by the Hughes family's new gallery!"
"She even said the gallery wronged her, when her salary was almost as high as mine."
While listening to Elijah's indignation, Catherine calmly glanced at her phone.
It was full of messages from the Windsor family and Alexander. Catherine replied to each one, mostly with emojis.
If she didn't reply, the Windsor family might even come out as a group to pick her up from work.
There was a commotion outside the office door. A woman in high heels walked in arrogantly, looking down at Catherine.
"Ms. Windsor, you haven't signed my resignation letter yet. Take a look at the compensation I'm asking from the company."
When Elijah saw her, he was almost furious.
"Jennifer, how dare you come back? Why should the company compensate you? How has our gallery wronged you?"
Jennifer's face was full of smugness, looking disdainfully at Elijah in front of her.
"Every time we did an exhibition, I paid for the materials upfront, and the company withheld a lot of my money. There's also the quarterly bonus. I often worked overtime without getting overtime pay. Now that Ms. Windsor is here, let's settle everything."
Jennifer took out a calculation sheet and placed it on Catherine's desk.
Elijah's face turned red with anger!
How shameless could Jennifer be!
Catherine looked at the list and smiled slightly, "Do you understand the law?"
"What do you mean? My request for company compensation is all in accordance with labor law."
"Voluntary resignation requires my signature? Moreover, you've taken kickbacks multiple times. This money should indeed be calculated."
The smile on Jennifer's face instantly disappeared. She looked coldly at Catherine, who was only nineteen years old. What did she know?
Now that the Hughes family's gallery had hired her at a high price to be manager, Jennifer figured Catherine didn't understand anyway, so she might as well come back and cause some trouble.
Maybe she could get some benefits.
"What do you mean? The gallery never reimbursed me for the materials I paid for."
Catherine nodded, opened the computer and accessed the backend system. Her slender fingers typed rapidly, and she quickly found a long string of data.
"In your ten years at the gallery, information on all the exhibitions you've done, every material expense is listed. Last month's Medieval Special Exhibition had material costs of $180,000, but you took $300,000 from the gallery. Are you saying that extra $120,000 was your compensation to the gallery?"
"Over these ten years, you've taken an extra $10 million this way. Do you still care about quarterly bonuses?"
Catherine leaned back slightly, looking at Jennifer with an indifferent expression.
"What are you talking about! How can you prove this data is real? Do you know how much those materials cost on the market?"
Catherine tossed Jennifer a price quote.
"Then you tell me, how much do these materials cost on the market? $50,000 per square foot for aluminum alloy frames - I've never seen that."
Jennifer looked at the price quote in front of her, which listed almost all the main materials needed for the exhibition with their prices!
Catherine used the access Charles gave her to log into the group's internal network, quickly scanning through and finding all the information she needed, printing it all out and placing it in front of Jennifer.
Elijah looked at that price quote, then took out the quote Jennifer had previously submitted, and was stunned!
"How dare you overcharge so much! Every exhibition you skimmed off hundreds of thousands of dollars!"
Was she here to work or to invest?
This was criminal!
Jennifer panicked. She didn't expect that in such a short time, Catherine could find so much information, and even knew those material prices were wrong!
Now she could only insist that everything Catherine said was made up and had nothing to do with her.
Catherine saw through Jennifer's thoughts, "Whether what I'm saying is true or false doesn't matter. I don't need you or your subordinates either. Since your hearts aren't with our gallery, there's no need for you to be here. Go to prison and learn how to job-hop properly."
Prison!
Jennifer's eyes widened. She wasn't as smug as when she arrived, and almost collapsed to the floor!
"No, Ms. Windsor, I can't go to jail. The Hughes family - it was all the Hughes family's doing. The Hughes family also knew we were opening the gallery tomorrow and deliberately made the suppliers stop cooperating."
Catherine glanced at her and said lightly: "Was it also the Hughes family who told you to take money from the gallery?"
Jennifer was speechless!
"Don't call the police. I'll bring those employees back to work. From now on, we'll all dedicate ourselves to the company and absolutely won't slack off!"
Catherine didn't even look at her.
Even when the police came to take Jennifer away, her face showed disbelief. She couldn't understand how she came to cause trouble but ended up being sent to prison.
Elijah looked at Catherine with great respect!
Catherine was amazing - she saw right away that Jennifer had problems!
"Ms. Windsor, how did you know Jennifer overcharged so much?"