“Aaron! I thought you were off,” she said.
“I thought the same thing,” he grumbled. “But apparently, my presence was required.”
“I’m sorry. Let’s sit together. We can play meeting bingo.”
The suggestion lightened his mood. It was their favorite game to play at boring meetings—a combination of corporate buzzwords, haughty behaviors, and general cluelessness. The middle square was an open-ended “Technology fail,” and it was almost always the first one to get filled in.
As the head of HR, Zoe probably shouldn’t have encouraged this game, but then again, she was the one who invented it.
They’d only been friendly for a few weeks, and already she was making his work life so much more bearable. He was glad he’d made that impulse decision to pop into her office and offer to bring her lunch. He needed a work friend more than he realized.
They slipped into the large conference room, already full of people, and took the empty seats at the far end of the table.
“Welcome, everyone. Thanks for joining us today.” David smiled at the board members and tapped his keyboard to bringthe projector to life. As the CEO, it was his job to lead the meeting, and Aaron didn’t envy him one bit.
Time crawled to a stop as each department head gave their report, and Aaron discreetly picked up his phone to escape the boredom. There were a few pictures from Mark waiting for him, bright sunny shots of his friends’ happy faces with various animals sleeping in the background.
He flipped over to his conversation with Jay. Despite Aaron’s promise to himself to cool it, they’d texted a bit over the weekend. He wanted to use their time apart to quash his growing crush, but it was difficult to stay away. Whenever anything happened, good or bad, his first instinct was to message Jay.
It was getting ridiculous. When Mark had bought him a bright orange baseball cap withChicagospelled out in pizza slices, Aaron put it on and snapped a selfie, sending it to Jay before he even realized what he was doing.
The draw was too powerful.
AARON: I should quit my job and become a traveling tie salesman. I could see the world and spread the good word of paisley at the same time.
JAY: Aren’t you at the zoo right now?
AARON: See previous text and take a wild guess.
JAY: Ah, shit, you got summoned? Was there a strategy emergency? Did someone forget whether you’re driving innovation or transformation?
AARON: You clearly don’t have our passion for excellence.
Zoe nudged him with her elbow, and he looked up from his phone. “You’re not paying attention,” she whispered. “I just got theback in the daysquare.”
Aaron flipped open his notebook to check his board. “I don’t have one of those, but I have a good feeling aboutbashing Gen Z employeesduring the IT report.”
He was proven correct. After Wei, their director of IT, finished explaining how the newly adopted platforms improved the employee experience, a crotchety board member went on a rant about useless apps. Wei wisely chose not to argue with him and sat down without another word.
The next slide appeared on the screen, and it was Aaron’s turn to stand up.
“Aaron Copeland, our new director of strategy, will go over the progress we’ve made in reestablishing our brand.” David gestured in his direction, and Aaron stood from his seat as everyone turned to look at him. There was a point in his life when their piercing, judgmental gazes would make his palms sweat, but that time was long gone.
He launched into the spiel, covering the information on the screen. There was no real reason for him to be here. He’d put the slides together under the assumption that someone else would be presenting, so he kept it simple and self-explanatory. Anyone could have done this, leaving him to enjoy his time off in peace.
“Why should we care about this?” a board member interrupted him in the middle of his speech about the importance of employee engagement. A severe woman in a gray pantsuit, her expression somewhere between bored and displeased, she glared at Aaron with barely-disguised frustration. “Didn’t we decide to concentrate on our clients?”
“You are absolutely correct. We’ve been positioning ourselves to be seen as a client-centric organization.” Aaron fought a smile at the low, triumphant hiss from Zoe. He must have handed her another square. “But our greatest asset, now and always, is our employees. We can’t promise the best possible service without staff to deliver on that promise.”
“What the hell are you saying?” The man with the Gen Z vendetta jabbed in the direction of the screen. “Only fifty percent of our employees want to do their job?”
“That’s not what employee engagement means…” Aaron trailed off, recognizing a lost cause. “Fifty percent is actually great. The average in the US is around thirty percent, so we’re ahead of the curve. Non-profits typically have higher engagement rates, but a major reorg like this was bound to affect employee morale. We just have to make sure we’re keeping an eye on the numbers.”
“I assume you’ve already created an Employee of the Month program?” another board member piped up, using the most condescending tone possible. Aaron really wanted to go off on his own rant about how programs like that didn’t do shit, and companies should just pay people better and recognize their accomplishments in a timely manner, but no one would listen anyway.
“We’ll take that under advisement.” He offered the room a tight smile and sat down, reaching for his phone the moment he lost everyone’s attention.
AARON: They just asked me if I’m going to start an Employee of the Month program. I’m speechless.
