Page 80 of Not Bad for a Girl
“You okay?” Shane asked. He’d been leaning his chin on top of my head, and I’d accidentally clicked his teeth together.
“Uh, yeah, just need to see how Hopper and the Hopperites are holding up.”
Hi Nancy—just checking in. How are things with the fish?I held my breath, praying she didn’t tell me she’d drowned them in George’s casserole.
They seem fine, honey, she wrote back.
I let out a huge sigh of relief. “They seem fine,” I repeated to Shane.
“Good,” he murmured and settled me back against him. I was getting comfortable when the next text came through.
They don’t like country music, though.
I gasped.Not country! They like progressive rock, Nancy. We talked about this.
I thought we could expand their music tastes. I got a pair of binoculars. If I sit behind your couch and keep the lights off, I can watch them poop without them noticing.
Shane leaned down to read the messages over my shoulder, then sat back. “I just decided that I don’t want to know.”
I smiled and sent Nancy another quick message.Thank you for caring for them. Remember, just a pinch.
I pinch them all the time, we’re fine here, everyone’s having fun.Then she sent me a kissy face emoji. Maybe it was time to get back to Denver after all.
“Excuse me,” someone interrupted, and I jumped, almost knocking my phone into the fountain. I looked up to see David Olsen, CEO or Poseidon team member, depending on which story you believed. “Can I speak with you for a moment?”
Shane squeezed my shoulder and stood. “I’ll go check on Heidi and Jason,” he said, then left.
David sat next to me at the fountain. “Quite an evening, huh?” he said.
“Yep,” I responded.
“I wish you and the rest of the Artemis team had felt like you could come to me with your concerns about Melvin.”
“Permission to speak freely, sir?” I asked.
He grinned. “Granted.”
“For reasons I can’t understand, Apollo IT has continued to promote and celebrate Melvin Hammer. You pass him from department to department and deny opportunities to the rest of us. How did he get that status? Because you guys play cricket or grasshopper or whatever on the weekends? You have a group of extremely talented programmers who felt the need to go underground to create an amazing product without Melvin messing it up. The hoops we had to jump through to actually do our jobs… I mean no disrespect—”
He opened his mouth, but I kept going. “Really, I don’t. But you’re complicit in Melvin’s reign of terror. You shouldn’t have to ask why no one felt comfortable coming to you.”
He sat for a minute, and I saw a few unreadable emotions pass over his face. “You’re right. We’ve passed him around, hoping to find the right place for him, and that wasn’t the right decision for the company or the people working under him. Your candor makes you valuable to Apollo IT. And I think your innovation can help make it a better place to work. Would you consider withdrawing your resignation?”
I blinked. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might end up with the option of staying at Apollo IT. Part of me was drawn to the idea, if it meant I could keep my team. But then I looked at the opulence around us, paid for by the potential future salaries of Apollo’s workers. “I don’t think so. Your company promises no raises for hard work, no promotions for innovation, no room for growth. There’s a hiring and promotion freeze unless you’re Melvin or Taggert. In the end, there wasn’t even room for the manly Indiana Aaron.”
David shifted his weight uncomfortably on the fountain edge. “A lot of the conversations we’ve had with employees are about managingexpectations. It’s less about the idea that there will never be opportunities in the future and more about how to foster contentment with one’s current situation.”
Spoken truly as someone who’d never had their feelings “managed” by a superior. But was Apollo any different than any other office? Didn’t every office have a Melvin Hammer, in some form or another? If I went somewhere else, would I have to start all over as the girl in the wrong room? At least here, I’d blown that stereotype all to hell, and I had the ear of the CEO.
“I might consider staying, on several conditions. I would get to keep my team, Evan Smith, Allen Parks, Mike Mowery, and Bruce Atkins. And we would be known as Diana, not Artemis, going forward. And as the creative director of Diana, I would require a salary on par with what other creative directors make at Apollo IT. There also need to be step increases and incentives for the team members to keep them motivated to give their best. I’m sure I have some other conditions as well, but I’m a little tipsy, and it’s been a long day.”
David leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees, seeming to think for a few seconds. Then he nodded. “You drive a hard bargain, Indiana. I’ll have some conversations with the CFO, and then you and I can sit down and look at some potential offers.”
I nodded. “I’m open to hearing what you come up with. I’m going to require my lawyer to attend and review all documents before I consider an actual offer.” Margaret was about to become my legal counsel, even though she didn’t know it.
David stood. “I’ll get the ball rolling on Monday. Does that work?”
I nodded, then realized I was still barefoot. I tucked my feet under my legs. “I look forward to hearing from you.”