“I’m serious,” she hisses.
“My team’s working on it,” I grunt, and I look at her icon for a split second. Unlike everyone else employed at Green Checks Insurance, Barbie is the only one who still hasn’t uploaded a picture. Her default icon is just her initials.BH.
Even though it’s a joke, it really gives credence to myBarbie is an AI bottheory.
Some of my other evidence includes our work emails—mine isEtCarter@greenchecks, Aaron’s isAaKirby@greenchecks, and her handle is literally justBarbie@greenchecks—along with her lack of an online presence for someone who supposedly is fromsunny, sunny California.
Aaron allegedly found her online before she deleted her account last year, but there were only three old photos of an orange tabby posted on it, and they were all tagged to this one semi-popular account that’s still running.
Some of the images of that cat have been posted during our scrum calls, town halls, and the infamous four-hour meeting where Barbie wouldn’t stop picking apart every little step my team provided hers on a liability report.
The SOP for the liability report would be three hundred pages instead of its current seventy if I hadn’t stepped in and reminded her that we don’t need to document every tab and link provided on the software used. Or that we can’t create a standard on how a policyholder’s address is keyed because we can only go by how the agent submitted it.
Besides, there’s no way she could post pictures of a cat with ridiculous hats while simultaneously reaming my team over every little detail under a microscopic lens. Not unless she’s a bot.
“You don’t have to be here,” I say, and she scoffs. “It’s Saturday. My team will have it handled.”
“Are you sure?” she asks sweetly. “Ed called me to come in after he couldn’t reach you?—”
“I was in an area with poor reception,” I say, and my eyes narrow at her icon when her mic picks up thehellshe coughs under her breath. “But I am here now. I’ll try to see why it’s down.”
“As long as this impacts my team’s work,” she interjects, “I’ll stick around.Justin case you need a second set of eyes.”
“It’s fine. I’m sure you have better things to do, given that it’sSaturday?—”
“Don’t worry about it,” she cuts me off. “I just want to have the assurance that everything is operational, so my team’s not blindsided come Monday when none of the daily production reports have reached our inbox. My team can’t do their jobs if your team can’t do yours.”
The muscle in my jaw goes taut as I glare out my window. “The reports will be in your inbox by the time you sign in on Monday.”
“Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves,” she says. “There have always been some… performance issues on your end.”
My gaze hardens. “My team does not have any performance issues.”
“There have been so many delayed reports in the past few months,” she says matter-of-factly. “I’m sure you’re used to leaving people unsatisfied?—”
“Should I start recording this call?” I warn, because her not-so-subtle digs aren’t as cute as she thinks they are. Things go over Ed’s head all the time, but they don’t go over mine.
“—with all of your botched reports,” she goes on. “However, I believe in only sending out reports of the highest standard to business. And in a timely fashion, too.”
“Botched reports?” I echo.
“Like the times you guys would send us empty spreadsheets. Or how you guys would send the reports with the wrong data every Wednesday, without fail, despite me reporting it back to you every time,” she supplies. “Don’t even get me started on the time you guys sent my team a report of every audit completedseven years ago?—”
“I can assure you that my team isn’t sending you botched reports on purpose.” My words are a low growl. “None of the incidents you’ve listed are issues any longer.Ifyou pay attention to the status updates Help Desk sends out.”
She makes a little huffing sound. “You guys sent us a botched report last week.”
I almost set my headset down. Instead, I press my fingers to my temple.
The overtime pay is good. Think about Mom and Lara.I breathe through my nose.Mom’s house isn’t going to pay for itself.
“They were not botched,” I say flatly. “Does your team need a refresher on how to filter a spreadsheet?”
“Of course not,” she clips. “My team wouldn’t have any trouble filtering your report if your team hadn’t formatted the spreadsheet so weirdly in the first place.” She pauses for a beat. “Does your team need a refresher course on how to format a spreadsheet properly?”
“Not at all,” I say flatly, and I snatch my phone the moment it buzzes with an incoming text, welcoming any reprieve from this ongoing and never-ending insanity.
Aaron: this could be you
