Chapter 5 #2
He didn’t have a desk to go to. What would be a normal thing to do with a new employee, that would hopefully involve not interacting with more people? “I’ll show you the kitchen.”
But Carter and Kelly were standing in the kitchen, blocking the shelves.
When Morgan had started, Zabloom had gotten fresh bagels on Fridays; one of the ways Morgan could tell Brad hadn’t been doing well enough at attracting new investors was that the free snacks had been downgraded to granola bars and weird chips made out of things chips shouldn’t have been made out of.
“—not really resonating with our ideal customer profile,” Kelly was saying. “I don’t suppose Product has some competitive analysis we could use to build out a SWOT chart? Tim was… but, well…”
They both paused for a moment and Morgan froze. Luke bumped into her. Kelly stared into the middle distance. Carter let the water run, not looking up from the sink. Then he shook himself and continued with whatever they’d been talking about.
“Those are the points Brad says are clicking for investors right now.” Carter scrubbed the coffee pot with more ruthlessness than the poor thing could possibly deserve, his blue and white checkered shirt sleeves rolled up neatly to the elbow, the suds bright against his dark skin.
He had a rant about the general cleanliness of the coffee situation Morgan had heard several times already.
“Besides, our chief competitors are GreenField and Klick!Me, and from the posts I’ve been seeing on LinkedIn, Klick! Me just did another round of layoffs.”
“Well, we can spend less time on the Klick!Me slide, then. But it’s only competitive differentiation if it’s what the buyer personas actually want,” Kelly had her own coffee cup, from the nice place two blocks away, the one with the fancy pour-over setup.
Morgan tried not to wince. Reducing a catastrophe like a mass layoff to gossip just seemed so ghoulish.
“Well, that’s what Brad wanted in the next sprint,” Carter said. “Hwon never would have—”
“Before my time, not really relevant now.” It could have come out mean, but somehow Kelly made it cautionary.
“Yeah, guess not.” He added a spritz of white vinegar. “Hi, Morgan.”
“I wanted to introduce Luke, our new sales intern,” she said, rather than spinning around and walking out of the room like she wanted to.
Were they all just going to pretend like business was continuing like usual?
But then, business was continuing, after all.
“Luke, this is Carter, our CTO. And you remember Kelly, the Head of Sales?”
Luke extended a hand as Kelly’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. For a moment, Morgan worried she wouldn’t take it. But Luke’s eyes glowed again. She blinked, then shook his hand automatically. “Welcome aboard. Sorry it’s at such a terrible time. You didn’t meet Tim in your interview process, did you?”
“Briefly.”
“I’m sure this wasn’t how you were picturing today.” Kelly looked like she was going to say something else and then thought better of it. “We’ll get you settled in, just give us a little extra time, please. Hayley assigned you Morgan as your buddy?”
Carter’s hands were still covered in suds and he was pouring more vinegar into the coffee machine to descale it.
Morgan didn’t know how much scale a coffee machine could acquire in a week, but Carter was determined to ensure it never did.
He’d flat-out banned the office manager’s suggestion of a Nespresso cappuccino maker, claiming the milk frother was a germ haven.
Luke gave them an awkward little wave as she steered him back out the door.
“Do you hate all your coworkers?” Luke asked her.
“I don’t hate them,” she said, looking around quickly to see if anyone had heard.
“You very strongly want to not be in the same room as them,” he pointed out.
“Kelly’s my boss and I’m always afraid I’m going to mess up in front of her.
Carter’s nice enough, I guess. But he’s been around since the beginning of the company.
He’s bought the hype. Kelly’s relatively new, but it’s her job to sell the hype.
” She sighed. She didn’t want to talk about Tim right now.
Maybe they felt the same way? “They’re true believers. This company is everything to them.”
“And it’s not everything to you.”
She lowered her voice even further. “I don’t want to end up like Carter, whose only joy in life is descaling the coffee maker.”
“Or Tim.”
“Or Tim,” she agreed. “Speaking of which.”
“Everyone!” Hayley called with far too much enthusiasm for a memorial. “If you could gather over in the kitchen?”
Morgan politely let Ronaldo and Vijay go before her, praying for them to turn their backs so she could make a dash for the phone room.
“Are you ready for your speech?” Hayley chirped.
“Oh, uh,” Morgan said. Behind Hayley’s back, Luke gave her a frantic look.
She gestured to her head—could he mind-whammy Hayley again into forgetting she saw them?
But Hayley was already guiding her back into the kitchen, now crammed with the other twenty-odd Zabloom employees who were in the office that day.
Luke trailed behind. Everyone turned politely toward her.
“I just didn’t sleep very well last night, and I’ve got kind of a headache and I’d rather stand in the back today,” Morgan stammered.
“Oh, you poor thing, of course, I didn’t think,” Hayley said. She snagged a single-serve packet of painkillers out of the first aid kit that had probably been in the drawer since the drawer was installed. She handed that and a fresh cup of coffee to Morgan.
The coffee smelled very strongly of vinegar.
“Dear Zabloomers, we’re gathered here today to remember our dear colleague Tim Buchanan,” Hayley intoned, trying for solemn. “Unfortunately, Brad couldn’t be here, but he sent me a few words to say on his behalf.”
Morgan glanced around. Maybe now that she’d shown her face, they could sneak out and take advantage of the distraction?
But she’d stepped into the room to accept the coffee and now Ayumi from Accounting stood between them and the door.
Ayumi looked like she might burst into tears at any moment, but Ayumi always looked like that.
Hayley took out her phone and cleared her throat.
“Tim’s dedication to the company was unparalleled.
He was always ready to give a hundred and ten percent.
In today’s world…” She scrolled down a little.
Morgan wondered why she hadn’t printed it out, or at least gotten a bigger screen to read from.
“… a good marketer knows when to push the envelope to deliver success. And that’s exactly what…
” scroll, scroll, “…he did. I remember the first time I met Tim, at a conference in Aspen for visionaries. He saw my vision for a future where—”
“Excuse me,” broke in one of the guys from the solar panel group from the other side of the floor. “Can I kinda get through to the, uh—”
“Oh, sorry,” Carter mumbled and stepped out of the way of the refrigerator. A few people glared at the interruption.
“—HR departments would no longer rely on outdated methods for sourcing qualified candidates—”
“Are we out of two percent?” Solar Dude asked.
“Shhh.” Kelly looked at him like he was dog poop on her shoe.
“—but a new dawn of intelligent filtering, driven by predictive analytics—”
“Sorry, I need to put it back now.”
Carter shuffled back out of the way.
“—which Tim truly took to heart. In fact, when I was asked to give the…” scroll, scroll, “… keynote at the symposium, he—”
“Wait, this is oat milk.”
Next to her, Luke shifted irritably. His eyes glowed, and Solar Dude blinked. “Oh, oat milk’s got a better carbon footprint anyway.”
She wondered if Luke was trying to be respectful or just trying to move things along.
“… knowing that somewhere out there, Tim is relying on us now to carry our dream to success. Goodbye and god…” scroll, scroll, “… speed, buddy.”
Everyone looked around nervously, trying to figure out what to do next.
Vijay hesitantly clapped, and everyone joined in.
Luke looked confused, and then gamely slapped his hands together a few times.
From the floor above came a noise like someone whacking the Liberty Bell with a sledgehammer.
Kelly flicked the fallen sawdust off the shoulders of her summer blazer.
“And now, a musical interlude.” Hayley pulled up another page on her phone.
From the speaker in her hand, a tinny piano intro emerged.
The lyrics were only vaguely familiar, although they seemed both appropriate in their bleakness and wildly inappropriate for playing on behalf of a colleague.
It wasn’t until the refrain came around that Morgan was able to identify the plaintive vocals of Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel.”
Hayley would stop after the first refrain. Wouldn’t she?
She did not.
They stood there, awkwardly, no one making eye contact, as the song continued on.
And on. Luke’s eyes flared again, but nobody said anything.
Ronaldo clasped his hands in front of him, phone in his palms, occasionally glancing down to check his mail and fooling no one.
Kelly looked somber, her gaze distant. Every time the song transitioned from refrain to verse and back, Carter twitched.
Morgan counted ceiling tiles, praying for this to end and feeling terribly guilty about that.
It wasn’t that she was actually going to miss Tim—if he’d been fired, she probably wouldn’t have given him a second thought—but surely there was a song that would have been more Tim-ish.
Maybe she should actually say something.
He deserved to have someone talk about him as a person, not about his faked passion for marketing results.
Finally, the last notes faded out, to be replaced by a YouTube ad for Grammarly. Hayley silenced the phone quickly. “And now, Morgan can—”
“Delivery for Zabloom?” The bike delivery guy knocked on the doorframe with his elbow, his hands full with an insulated bag.
Hayley looked puzzled. “I didn’t order anything.”
Panic crossed Luke’s face and his eyes flashed yet again.
The delivery guy shrugged. “Says it’s from a Brad?”
“Well, that was thoughtful of him,” Kelly said, briefly looking surprised.
Morgan hoped no one emailed Brad to thank him as the office locusts descended. Luke grabbed her elbow and steered her toward the door.
Hayley gave up on whatever else she had planned, momentum broken by free food. “I set up a GoFundMe for his family. I’ll send around the link!”
“That’s, like, really nice,” said Vijay as he unpacked containers. “That the company’s doing something for the family.”
“Well, I’m afraid we’re behind our projections so we won’t be able to use company funds for this,” Hayley said. “But won’t his family feel so supported by all your personal donations!”
“What the hell?” said Ronaldo as he opened a container. “Escargot, steak tartare, and… ice cream? Are these, like, Tim’s favorites or something? I’d thought he was normal, for a marketing guy.”
She shot Luke a questioning look as they left the group behind.
“Snails and raw meat are traditional mourning foods,” he said defensively. “And I liked the ice cream. Should I have not added it?”
She would have replied, but his bracelet suddenly caught his eye and all the color drained from his face. The obsidian circle was glowing faintly with some kind of scratchy runes.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. They were so close!
“It’s too late,” he said, looking grim. “They know I’m missing.”