“Here, we encourage extra classes. But we also encourage outside interests to avoid burnout. What are your hobbies?”
He squirmed. “Hobbies?”
“Outside of work and school.”
He sat silent. Awkward. His hands turning over and over in his lap. His nerves made me nervous and I rarely experienced that. It wasn’t that I was a hard-hearted boss, but I was firm in my convictions. My team knew it. Always. But that meant a lot of us played hard on our time off.
I decided to help him out. “Do you like skiing? Ice sculpting? Tree decorating?”
His dark reindeer eyes got very big.
“What about flying?” I added.
He glanced away. “Is that a requirement?”
I frowned at his reaction. “Not unless you’re leading the sleigh.”
“Oh.”
I waited.
In a small voice, still looking down, he said, “My reindeer can’t fly. I almost died when I was born. I—I was left outside.”
Something turned over in my chest. My stomach muscles tightened. Who would do that to an infant? Reindeer shifters were close-knit. Family-oriented. Whatever had happened to Fallon, however, had not affected his brain.
I already knew I was going to hire him, but the interview wasn’t over.
“That shouldn’t happen to anyone,” I said.
He quickly glanced up. “I’m sleeping when I’m not working or studying. Does sleeping count as a hobby?”
Was he making a joke? “No.”
I decided to move on, asking him to go to the whiteboard by my window and work out a few equations I gave him. His hands shook at first, but as he worked on the first one his confidence grew, and by the last equation he made powerful strokes with beautiful handwriting to finish with a flourish.
He turned, marker in hand, and faced me for my verdict.
In truth, he solved everything I gave him faster than anyone I’d ever interviewed. But there was something in that last equation that puzzled me. It wasn’t in the usual order of things.
I walked up and pointed to a section of it. “Why this and not the standard rule?”
“It’s a shortcut,” he replied, for once not looking worried at all. “It gets the same result."
I studied it further. “I don’t understand.”
In a slow, soft voice, he began to explain. When he finished, I couldn’t think for a moment. He had surpassed me. I didn’t like it. I loved it.
“If you tell me to do standard procedures, I will. I can. I’m sorry.”
I tilted my head. “Why are you apologizing? We encourage creative thinking. Santa needs quick nav adjustments that sometimes aren’t straight-forward. I simply hadn’t seen that before.”
He nodded. “It’s like that at the workshop, too. He likes toy spinoffs. Plus, we have to keep up with modern technology.”
This was different. Or so I thought. This was about Santa’s entire ability to deliver millions of gifts in one night. But then I reminded myself something I’d always been taught as an elf child. Without the toys, there would be no Christmas Eve flight to manage.
I liked to think my job was the most important in Santa’s Village. My opulent office and high six figure salary had my alpha traits in overdrive, especially when I was younger. People were put off by me. Intimidated. My personal life suffered.
Now, here was a young omega reindeer who did math beyond what I could understand. My alpha side was tempted to run for cover.
