Chapter Nineteen
LACEY
I’m badgering QA about something they’ve decided is a release-blocking priority that literally no one is going to care about when I hear the Lettercat gong ring.
It’s not a victorious smack; it’s the mournful one managers do to announce when someone’s given notice or we need to roll back our release.
This is supposed to be a day about grit and tenacity; if not a celebration of the thing we’re launching, at least the ridiculous effort and spirit of the team that built it.
There’s no room for sad gonging today. I’m amped up on all my experiments with Jude’s fancy espresso machine this morning and ready to shame whatever Eeyore is at the gong, but then I look over.
And I see Jude there.
He’s pale and his eyes look red, and his hand might be shaking a little.
“I’m not happy to give this update. And I truly thank you all for your efforts, but it looks like we’re not going to be releasing today. Or any time in the near future.”
I feel like I must have heard him wrong, but the way everyone else is reacting means I didn’t.
“The fuck?” Kate says, loudly.
“I’m- I’m sure you have a lot of questions and they’ll all be answered, just not today. And I know we had an event planned for this afternoon and I want you to all still go. Sorry there won’t be anything to celebrate but you can at least, I don’t know. Go.”
He shrugs and starts to walk back to his office.
The part of me that cares about Jude is devastated for him and whatever is happening.
The part of me that spent the last month rallying a team and busting my ass on something I was told was the future of our company is having trouble seeing through all of the rage.
“So what are we telling the customers and ad partners who are expecting this today?” I ask, loudly, across the office. Some might say aggressively.
“That it’s on hold,” he says.
“And what are we supposed to work on now?”
“I will get back to you on that, Lacey. It’s a developing situation.”
“Great,” I reply.
And I wouldn’t say I throw it, but I toss my laptop on the desk next to me. Some might say angrily.
Jude walks back to his office and everyone explodes into gripes.
“Oh look, things are back to normal,” Kate announces.
Back at my desk, I take a few deep breaths.
“I miss Glenn,” Trevor tells me.
“Same,” I say, keeping it short because I don’t cry at work.
Ella comes skittering down the hall and into our pod. “He won’t talk to me,” she tells us.
“I’ll go,” Trevor offers. “There must be some serious shit going on.”
“I’m coming too,” I say.
We march down to his office.
“Jude asked that he not be-” Jonnie tries.
“No,” I say, following Trevor inside, where Jude’s sitting on the couch with his head in his hands, clearly regretting the whole Open Doors thing.
“Bro,” Trevor says, pity mixed with disgust.
“You guys know this isn’t my call,” Jude says, looking at his socks.
“Of course it wasn’t,” I say. “But you just dropped a bomb on everyone and came in here to hide.”
He looks up at me, irritated.
“What am I supposed to do, Lacey? It’s not the CEO’s job to stand in front of the team and blame everything on the board. I can’t even tell you guys what’s going on, okay?”
“Is it Edmund?” I ask.
“There was an emergency board meeting this morning. Please don’t let that leave this room.”
“I bet it’s about that Tooity shit,” Trevor says.
Jude just sighs and pulls his wallet out of his pocket.
“Here,” he says, holding a credit card out. “It’s the company card. I don’t care what the tab is, just go and tell everyone to be done for the day.”
Trevor takes the card but I’m already out the door.
I go to the stairwell, which is part of the building but not technically the office. Because I don’t cry at work.
The door opens.
“Woman,” Kate says, sitting next to me and handing me a tissue to blubber into. “I told you work was a shitty choice of boyfriend.”
“It did kind of break my heart,” I sniff.
“And it didn’t even get you off before that,” she rubs my back consolingly. “We can do better. But first let’s get you nice and drunk with the team, okay?”
I nod. She dabs the remainder of my tears away with a fresh tissue and we go back to the office to get our things and file into the elevator with our tired and confused co-workers.
Dave is older and wiser and he tells us that when you luck into day drinking on a beautiful afternoon in San Francisco, you go to The Ramp. It’s just what you do.
“I think Jude had a rez at Woodbury,” Trevor offers.
“I think I speak for everyone right now when I say these two words: fuck Jude,” Dave says.
We walk to The Ramp, which is quite literally a restaurant next to a ramp into the bay, with outside tables and water views and vibes far more mellow and relaxed than ours.
Angry Lettercatters and tequila should make for an interesting mix, but I’m going to take it easy.
I sit back and listen to criticism, conspiracy theories, gossip, but mostly shit-talking.
“I just feel betrayed, man. I mean, I should know better, but I thought he was different,” Dave is saying to our table of surly engineers.
“Because he made us think he was one of us,” Ingrid explains.
Dave points at her. “Exactly. That’s exactly it. It’s all an act. At the end of the day, he’s a founder, not an engineer.”
I don’t have it in me to defend Jude right now, so I pick up my drink and move to a table where Kate and Trevor are sitting alone. Kate is helping herself to the fried that came with Trevor’s burger; it’s got to be bad if Trevor’s eating carbs.
“You done trashing my buddy?” Trevor asks me when I sit down.
“I’m not trashing him” I say.
“You’re not mad, you’re just disappointed?” he suggests.
“Something like that.”
“See, the difference between Trevor and me and the people at those tables,” Kate waves a French fry at the development teams tipsily, “is that you all take this too personally. It’s a job.”
She has a point. When you work at a startup, it’s easy to let it become your whole life.
Your coworkers become your friends and family, the company successes become your own.
But it isn’t real life. The fact of the matter is that companies that pop up out of nowhere can fall apart just as easily.
This type of thing happens all the time; it’s happened to me before.
“I worked at this one startup,” I say, “where I was in product but the founder would make me sit at the reception area whenever he had people coming to the office so he could look important enough to have a secretary.”
“Ugh,” Kate says. “I was at one where the CFO is now literally in prison.”
“A guy at this one startup was secretly living in the office,” Trevor tells us. “He had a gym membership so he could shower.”
We trade horror stories for another hour, then I sneak out while Kate’s in the bathroom and Trevor’s talking to a girl at the table next to ours.
I had one drink because I didn’t want to cry or say anything I shouldn’t. And I need to get great sleep tonight and spend tomorrow prepping; I got an email this morning from one of the founders of the travel startup Edmund’s working with. I’m having coffee with both of them on Wednesday.
But before I go home, I text Ella. She meets me outside Jude’s building with my bag, which I’d optimistically packed with two days of clothes. We were supposed to be celebrating tonight.
“You haven’t heard from him?” she asks.
I shake my head and she gives me a hug.
“I’m sorry,” she tells me. “If it’s any excuse, he’s a total mess.”
“Should I try to talk to him?” I ask, looking up at his building.
“Lacey, he’s not here. He’s halfway to New York right now.”
My alarm goes off at 7:03 a.m. and I turn it off. I’ve decided I’m not working today. I’m sure when I log into Slack I’m going to see at least 10 other WFH messages, all of them meaning: fuck this place, I’m working on my LinkedIn.
At 7:04 a.m. my phone starts buzzing. It’s Jude, who after Santa Cruz knows what time my alarm is set for.
I answer the call but I don’t say anything.
“Lacey?” he says. He’s outside. I can hear Manhattan in the background.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning.”
“I know Ella told you I’m in New York. I just. I want to apologize for yesterday.”
I roll onto my back and blink at the ceiling. “Which part of yesterday?”
“Everything that happened after noon Pacific Daylight Time.”
I don’t say anything.
“You don’t have to forgive me, I’m not looking for that. And I can’t explain everything right now, but when I get back I will. I just—I don’t want you to write me off completely. I might be a shitty CEO, but I hope that the rest of me could be good enough for you.”
“Okay,” I tell him.
“Okay to what?”
“It’s just all I have right now. Okay.”
“That’s fair. Listen, I have to go. But I—”
He hesitates and I close my eyes. Please don’t, I think.
“I’ll see you soon,” he finishes.
“Okay,” I say, and I hang up.
I’m not trying to punish Jude, but I’m concerned that’s how it feels to him.
The truth is, I have a habit of excusing bad behavior in people I care about.
I don’t know if it means I’m an optimist or I don’t want to admit I was wrong about someone, but once I let someone in, it’s very hard for me to show them the door.
It’s not until later on that I even realize I’m letting them off too easy.
I’m only trying to be careful with myself.
It’s also difficult for me to separate how I’m feeling as a product manager at Jude’s company from how I feel about him as whatever he’s become to me personally. It’s complicated to want to strangle the person I’m worried about.
All the more reason to prepare for my coffee date with Faith and Layla tomorrow. I practice giving a summary of my career thus far, my strengths and accomplishments, and what I’m looking to do next, and record myself on my phone.
“I’ve had a lot of success at Lettercat, but now I’m looking for an opportunity to build the product function from the ground up.”
“You don’t sound so sure about that,” I say to the person on the screen. I keep at it until I can convince even myself.