Connor does what I’d describe as an incredulous pause.
“You want to do the skills test.”
“Why not?”
“Are you good with Excel?”
“Absolutely.”Not.Absolutely not, I hate Excel. I will admit this to him never. I will grind his stupid skills test to dust.
“Great.” His tone tells me he thinks I’m full of shit.The feeling is mutual, buddy.
“So we’re agreed? If I pass your little skills test, I can have the job?”
His mouth twitches just the slightest bit. Is he laughing? “We’re agreed. Do you want me to walk you throughit?”
“I think I can handleit.”
“Sure.” He nods, grave again. “I’ll send it over, then.”
“You do that.”
“I will.”
“Fantastic.”
“Perfect.”
“Ideal.”
We stare each other down for another minute until I blink, and the spell is broken.
By the time I’m storming out of the cafeteria, the fear of being laid off and humiliated in front of my family is all but forgotten. I have one goal only: humble this Connor Reid and become the greatest data strategist to ever walk the earth.
Four
It’s been decided by the members of theWHAT THE FUCK?group chat that we’ll all meet at Murphy’s Tavern for a debrief. Since I have nothing to do until Connor sends over the promised skills test, I join them. If nothing else, it’s probably a good opportunity for a little reconnaissance.
Murphy’s has always been the de facto meeting place of the product team—the vaguely Irish pub is run-down compared to the rest of the Financial District in a way that feels almost charming. It’s perpetually dark, the wood is faded, and the single decorative feature is a huge mural of signed dollar bills stapled to the wall behind thebar.
There’s a real pre-vacation energy in the room when I push through the doors. Though it’s barely eleven in the morning, the drinks are already flowing. And why not? We’re the only people in here, and the majority of us don’t have jobs anymore. You can feel it in the air: these people are here for a session.
As expected, there’s a single topic up for discussion—mostly we’re all saying some version of “Can you believe this?” over and over again while the shots get passed around. Usually when there’s layoffs,someonesees them coming, rolling toward the business like a huge storm. Today’s proceedings at least have some novelty. They’ve come as a huge shock to everyone.
—
Eventually, I spot Andy’s disembodied head across the room and make my way toward him, his gel-glossed hair the end point on my treasure map. As another Jotter original, Andy and I go way back—he’s the closest thing we have to a rock star in the product department, and for a while there, I was basically his groupie.
Andy was famous at Jotter for launching our most talked-about feature, the template library. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a huge collection of pre-populated boards which teachers or marketing managers or software engineers could use to hit the ground running when they set up a new project. It was extremely successful when it launched. And eventually, one of the reasons Taskio acquired Jotter.
I already know he and the rest of his team survived the culling—they’re now one of only a handful of Jotter squads left in the entire department. He’s deep in discussion when I approach, talking to Leon, another product manager who, like me, also lost his job this morning.
“There she is,” Andy says, looping an arm around my shoulders and squeezing me to his side like a long-lost friend.
Though my crush on Andy took a long time to die, overall, it was an instructive learning experience about the nature of workplace flirtation, which no matter what it might seem like, indicates nothing.
Making out at the Christmas party also means nothing. Equally meaningless: getting to second base in the stairwell at that same party. I cringe every time I remember that he has drunkenly touched my nipple. Or how smoothly he forgot the whole thing.
“It just seems crazy that it would happen that fast,” Leon says, returning to whatever conversation they were having.
