Nobody (Draft 1)

Written 56-D22 [2024-11-03], Edited 56-E05 [2024-11-14]

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Ada listened to raindrops hit her umbrella as she stood on a Missisaugan sidewalk. She hoped for dryness that would pose no threat to her expensive dress pants, and silence that would pose no threat to her turbulent thoughts.

Ada stared at her phone and waited for a message from Andrew who was both the CEO of Maxiq and, for today, her carpool partner. He was late, and Ada contemplated calling her own Uber. But changing plans this late would disappoint Andrew, her manager’s manager.

Instead Ada periodically removed her phone from her pocket, checked for notifications, and returned it. Again and again until she slowed down to appreciate her lock screen picture. It depicted a road much bumpier than any in Missisauga, with a quotation attributed to Seneca: “It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.”

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Ada had last set her lock screen back in February 2021, back in university. She was trying to finish an assignment in a computer programming course, when a LinkedIn notification popped up.

“Hey Ada, guess what?” asked a LinkedIn message from Patty.

“What is it?” Ada texted back.

“I got the part-time job at Deployt during the school term, and you didn’t,” texted Patty. “Well, I guess that shows that Matthew liked me more.”

“Congratulations,” Ada texted, straining herself trying to ignore the insults.

“Yeah, good luck finding a job at some boring little mom-and-pop shop, while I help Matthew build empires,” texted Patty.

Ada didn’t respond, but doubled checked her inbox for her own part-time job offer. An offer Ada had not accepted.

Ada sighed while staring at her assignment. She started typing “Hi Matthew, I have some questions about the product launch” into her code editor. Then she cursed, held her delete key, and reminded herself that her day in the sun was yet to come.

Soon I’ll be free from all this academic nonsense, she thought. Soon, I’ll be making real products for real clients paying real money for real work. Soon, I’ll be the empire-builder.

Then, after finding a phone background with an inspirational quote, she got back to work.

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Ada was pulled back into the present by movement in her peripheral vision. It was some Ford that Ada didn’t recognize because no bloggers had bragged about its mileage. In the front seat was a stranger, presumably an Uber driver. In the back was Andrew. He was short, clean-shaven and dressed business casual.

As Ada stepped in, she was relieved to be out of the rain. The relief was short-lived. Only seconds later, Andrew asked, “So what do you think of your boss?”

Ada stared in silent thought.

“Oliver McGrady, your boss, the CTO of our company,” asked Andrew. “What do you think of him?”

“He’s done well,” said Ada.

“Really?” asked Andrew. “I think he’s a bit of a softie, too generous.”

“Things could be a lot worse,” replied Ada.

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As Ada spoke, she thought back to a much worse moment in April 2021, when she walked into the office of a tall, clean-shaven, muscular man with a dark grey suit and light grey hair. The tall man stared at a 4K screen while loudly clacking on a mechanical keyboard. His face was unmasked, in violation of social distancing guidelines. At the creak of the door, the man stood up and smiled at Ada.

“Hey Ada, good to see you again,” said Matthew, the CEO of Deployt.

“The pleasure is all mine,” said Ada.

“That Patty, real motor mouth am I right?” said Matthew. He smirked while picking up a pen. “Always bitching, that one. Impossible to work with.”

Ada laughed while opening and closing her hands, imitating a talking mouth.

Matthew fidgeted with the pen a bit.

“Yeah on a more serious note, sorry about the mix up at HR. We were supposed to give you a full time offer, not send you through the interview process all over again.” said Matthew.

Ada looked into Matthew’s eyes. She briefly felt adrift in his dilated pupils and his dark brown irises. She shook her head to focus.

“We need you Ada. We need someone with your drive, your ingenuity, your work ethic, your passion for configuring IBM internet services with interfaces designed in 2003, and most of all, your creativity.” Matthew continued. “If you are still willing to work with us, I and the rest of the team would be eternally grateful.”

Immediately after accepting the offer, Ada got to her desk and set up her workspace. She placed small portraits of her favorite dictators and business titans under the dual monitors. She adjusted the height of her office chair and changed her desktop background to a motivational quote, this time from Sun Tzu. The onboarding was practically a formality: Ada had seen it all before as an intern, and Deployt was a frugal startup not yet fattened by layers of bureaucracy.

At the end of her seven hours of official work and three hours of unpaid overtime, Ada noticed a Post-It note on the floor. It was face down, and initially all Ada could see was the dust and hair stuck to the adhesive strip.

Ada picked up the Post-It and saw a message written in cursive with multiple colours.

I’ll miss you, Patty!

Ada felt a surge of glee when she threw the Post-It in the trash.

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“Interesting,” said Andrew with a neutral expression on his face. It was getting harder to see the world outside the car because the rain was getting heavier, slamming against the window like a meteor shower.

“Don’t you think it’s dysfunctional that Matthew sent a full time offer and then made me interview again!?” asked Ada. “Doesn’t that show a lack of competence?”

“Maybe,” said Andrew. He drank one of the Uber’s complimentary bottles of water.

“Well that’s not even the worst part!” Ada exclaimed. She unconsciously opened and closed her fists.

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According to a particularly ugly wall clock, the worst part happened in August 2021. Ada noticed this clock when she entered an empty conference room and sat at the right of Matthew’s spot. Minutes later, other employees dragged their feet as they shambled in. Ada’s colleagues had bags under their eyes and slouching backs. But they brightened their faces and straightened their spines when Matthew walked in.

“Hey guys, I’m sorry to say that Thomas has left Deployt,” Matthew began. “We had to let him go because unlike you guys, he was just too lazy. He didn’t have the grit and determination we need to make Deployt succeed.”

Ada briefly remembered that Thomas suffered a heart attack a couple weeks ago. But after his recovery, he wasn’t willing to work overtime like everyone else.

“Guys like Thomas,” continued Matthew, “just don’t care enough about the product, about the clients, about the rest of the Deployt family. He betrayed us by slacking off and making us all clean up his messes.”

A couple of Ada’s colleagues nodded, dimly aware that Matthew would appreciate some kind of response.

“We’re a family here at Deployt. We help each other, we put in all the effort humanly possible because we care about each other and we all want the company to succeed. But guys like Thomas, they just don’t get that, they don’t understand the value of hard work, they don’t understand loyalty, they don’t have what it takes to support the company. You guys, you are the special few, the people who really deserve to be part of Deployt. I know you guys would do whatever it takes to keep this community alive, through good times and bad.”

An intern gulped, but Matthew ignored it and continued.

“And good times are coming, Ada and the product team are working on a new configuration for IBM’s SAAS platform. This is a multimillion-dollar opportunity, if we can push a little bit harder, if we can fulfill all our current commitments and get this product out the door, we’ll be golden, it’ll be a new dawn for the Deployt family, we’ll all be rich!”

Ada smiled at the mention of her name, and at the mention of a “product team” composed of just herself and junior developer. She forgot about Thomas, and steeled her nerves. It was time to turn ten-hour workdays into eleven-hour workdays.

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A crack of thunder interrupted Ada’s train of thought. She suddenly noticed that the car she was in was no longer moving. Ada briefly looked out the windows and could make out dark shapes and red lights.

“So Ada,” said Andrew. “I know our CTO, Oliver, is not nearly as awful as this guy. But that’s kind of a low bar. Do you really think the developers working under Oliver enjoy working here?”

“Listen, from my perspective as product manager, our developers are some of the least motivated I’ve ever seen,” said Ada.

“But you don’t think it’s Oliver’s fault,” said Andrew.

“Nope,” said Ada. “Oliver is the best boss I’ve ever had.”

“That’s some high praise,” said Andrew. “Then again, he’s the one who recomended you. How did you two cross paths anyway?”

Ada bit her lip.

“We crossed paths on one of the worst days of my life.”

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According to the date at the bottom of the termination letter, one of the worst days in Ada’s life was in August 2022.

“I can’t deal with this anymore Ada!” Matthew shouted. “You released three products, but you’re impossible to deal with! First there’s the whole rejected promotion thing that you won’t forget about.”

Ada said nothing, and Matthew continued.

“And on top of that, you are so toxic to everyone! You snake, you quietly wait and then suddenly bite! Why do you keep talking shit about the other employees Ada? Why do you keep blaming them, and saying they’re not working hard enough? There’s nobody else doing that Ada!”

Ada started to cry. She was too sad, too shocked, too overwhelmed to argue.

Matthew slammed his fist on the table and snarled at Ada like a hound. “Don’t you realize your crying is creating an abusive workplace environment?” Matthew barked. “Get the hell out of here, I never want to see your face again!”

Ada acted as instructed and made her way home. The tears had not dried from her eyes when she recieved a LinkedIn message from someone she barely remembered, a senior manager who had joined only day ago.

“Ada,” the message said. “I heard the sad news. It was great to meet you. You seem really bright and I was hoping to work with you. If there is anything I could do to help, let me know, I have many contacts in the startup world.”

The sender was a man named Oliver McGrady.

Ada appreciated the little pocketful of kindness from a near-stranger. But she didn’t want his help. She didn’t know where to go next.

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“But you didn’t take his help immediately,” said Andrew, piercing the veil of Ada’s imagination. The car was moving again, to the delight of all its inhabitants. “Was his offer not convincing enough?”

“It was nothing like that,” Ada explained. “I had a crisis of confidence, I didn’t know if I wanted to be a product manager in tech anymore. But eventually I came to terms with the fact that it was the thing I was best at, and returned to the industry.”

“Oliver seemed enthusiastic about bringing you here,” said Andrew. “To Maxiq of course, not to this Uber.”

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Maxiq. For most people it would just be another annoying startup name, but for Ada the name brought her back to October 2023, when Ada found herself back in the offices of a tech startup. Luckily, Maxiq was totally different than Deployt. There was more productivity and less jealousy. There was more encouragement and fewer threats. There was more direction and less blame. It has only been a couple weeks, and Ada felt better already.

But as Ada held her ear to the boss' corner office, she could hear the faint sounds of crying. And the voice of her kindly CTO, Oliver McGrady, as quiet as a pin drop.

“I’m sorry, but we’re not renewing your contract,” McGrady said. “We’re considering other resources for the user stories and UX design.”

No shouting, no blaming, no struggling. No explanation at all. Ada heard the contractor get up, so she decided to stop snooping on the corner office and return to her desk.

A few hours later Ada was notified of an email.

“Hey Ada,” read the email. “Great job with the dev meeting last week. Our CEO, Andrew, was impressed. Now, I know you’re swamped, but I was wondering if you could write some user stories for the authentication flow? Keep up the excellent work! Oliver McGrady, Maxiq CTO”

User stories: the job the contractor used to do. Ada felt her stomach twist and a lump form in her throat. She felt her blood pressure rise, and her breathing become more laboured. Her fingers shook centimetres above the keyboard.

Ada closed her eyes and took some deep breaths. Then she started typing. “Hi Oliver, I’d love to work on the user stories! Thanks, Ada.”

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“That contractor isn’t the only one feeling stressed,” said Andrew. “The entire development team is getting aggravated at Oliver.”

Ada raised her eyebrows as the Uber finally rolled to a stop. “Hold on, why did you ask me if the developers enjoy working here? You already knew the answer!”

Andrew laughed as he opened the car door. He never provided an explanation, but he fired Oliver the next week.

Ada often thought about that conversation, even as late as October 2033. It was an unremarkable month for Ada, but an intern named Julia was deeply troubled. Julia had passed some technology exam months ago - skyrocketing prices made university untenable for her. The exam fulfilled gave Julia a shot at a tech job. She hadn’t got into a big corporation, but at least she managed to snag a job offer at a startup, AdaTech.

Julia walked into a corner office wearing a VR headset. She was so stressed out, she almost missed out on the decor. On the left was a portrait of Cardinal Richelieu, and on the right was a portrait of Jeff Bezos.

At the center was a desk inhabited by a middle-aged woman, the empress of the budding corporate empire, Ada herself. A headset covered Ada’s eyes and she held a paper.

Julia tore off her headset, and realized that the document and portraits were all virtual. She got on her knees. Julia’s organic eyes stared into Ada’s glass visor.

“Ada please, don’t do this, I’ll turn things around,” said Julia. “Ada, please, if you give me another chance, I’ll be eternally grateful.”

Ada pursed her lips. She was suddenly aware she was holding her breath and slowly exhaled through her nose. It was too late for Julia. The termination letter was already digitally signed.

Feedback

• worth adding:
  • motion sickness
  • driver says calm down
  • a farewell to oliver
  • windows vs ibm

Notes

This is the second draft of Nobody. This was submitted to the Toronto Star short story contest and lost.