Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Short Story: There is no such thing like a free lunch

I hate Wednesdays. As a product manager for Kittle, an online retailer for baby stuff, I am used to having lots of meetings. However Wednesdays are plain bad. At 10am, I meet with Richard Long, the manager for customer support. He is a pompous ass and speaks as if he owns the company. We nicknamed him “Long Dick”, I am sure you would guess the reference to his name. I discuss the feedback that he got from the customers in the past week, pick the main three and brainstorm on how to better customer experience. At 11am, I meet with the web developers to explain the requests from customer support group. The meeting usually seems like training a bunch of monkeys to play a Mozart symphony. At 1pm I meet with the UX designers to participate in their user experience studies, give them feedback, which usually runs longer than I hope for. It feels like they speak a completely different language than mine, even though we all speak English. They never seem to get my point. Then I get an hour of break before my 3pm meeting with my manager. He is just as predictable as a flying mosquito around you. You never know what to expect. One week he is calm and supportive and the other he erupts into a maniac for no reason. Unless I am ready with hard facts, there is a good chance he will eat me alive, if he is in a bad mood. Just thinking about it makes me shiver. Probably this is why Wednesday is called “hump day” that I get humped all day long. I am already tired thinking about my day, even though the current time is just 8:45am.
“Good morning Laura, you look very nice in that red dress!” said Stephanie, our receptionist, just as I walked into the office.
“Good morning Steph, and thank you!”, I said. Steph is a very charming old lady who is always smiling and ready to chat. On any other day I would’ve made a small talk with her, but I got shit load of work to get to.
“I’ve a feeling you going to have a good day Laura”, shouted Steph as I walked into the elevator to get to my office on the 4th floor. “Good day, my ass” I thought as the elevator doors closed. Do these greetings even matter? Did they ever make anyone’s day better than they would have otherwise? What a dumb ass custom we follow!
I went to my office, sat on the desk and turned on my computer. I check myself in the mirror next to my computer. Is that a wrinkle under my eye? I can’t be having this. My lips were pale, what happened to the lipstick I wore in the morning? Did I even do my make up? Was Steph ridiculing me? I take out my touch up kit from my bag and apply make up; there now I look better. I look to my screen and Oh God, 128 unread emails. when will I’ve time to go through them? Well get it to it lady, said my inner voice.
“What is it Mariame? Don’t linger over there, if you have something to say.” I saw Mariame’s reflection on my screen; she has already peeked to talk to me a couple of times. Mariame works for me, she is sweet and capable but sometimes has a weird character.
“Hi Laura, wow! I like your pumps. When did you get them?”
“Come on Mariame, get to the point, I know you didn’t come to discuss about my shoes.”
“Oh, why do you say that? I really wanted to compliment on your pumps” she said nervously.
“I am sorry, thank you for your compliment”
“There is one more thing, I had a dream about you yesterday night. It is nonsense, but was interesting. For some reason you were frustrated and were mad in one moment and were laughing hysterically the other. It was bizarre.”
"Oh geez, thanks, now I am a weirdo in your dreams?" I thought to myself but said “That is indeed bizarre.”
“What do you think it means? do you think it is an omen for something?”
“I have no idea MAriame, now please let me get to my work, you know i’ve a long day ahead”
“I have a feeling you will have an interesting day ahead, Laura”, said Mariame as she left.
I’ve no idea why people feel Im going to have a good day, interesting day ahead. All I can think is it is going to be a stressful day. 
92 emails to go!
I was frantically trying to clear up the emails before the 10 am meeting. Otherwise, I won’t have any time left to do this. Thankfully I don’t have to prepare for the meeting.
“Laura, you ready for the meeting, I heard from Long Dick that it is going to be a very thought provoking one.” It was Wayne who works for Dick; I could recognize his coarse voice from across the room. I turned to him, forcing a “gee thanks for the heads up” smile. 
“Oh you know I am always ready to get Long Dick”, I winked and turned back to the my computer screen.
“Thats a beautiful necklace Laura. Is that a ruby pendant? Matches with your red dress”
Whats going on? Why are people noticing what I wear, and more importantly telling me what they feel? This is abnormal.
“Thanks Wayne, you are sweet! see you at the meeting”
“Yep, I’ve a feeling it is going to be entertaining” Wayne left laughing his heart out.
Yet another prediction, entertaining meeting. Why do people assume such things? So if I follow what people said, it is going to be a good, interesting day and an entertaining meeting. I doubt if it is going to be anything close to entertaining. 
Before long it was time for 10am meeting. As usual Dick was swinging his dick around in the meeting, talking pompous about how important the feedback from the customers is. After half an hour of boring granduer lecture, we came to the main three points to discuss. Nothing new there, the same old feedback. I took notes of the main points, and scooted out as fast as I can. “Entertaining? my foot!” I said I walked past Wayne. 
Then came the 11am developers meeting. For all practical purposes, I might as well say it felt like I went to the zoo and saw a bunch of chimpanzees. Social inept, unclean, and one of them was stinking too. I was hoping the meeting will go faster, but no, it dragged on. Thankfully we had a hard stop at noon.
I am hungry now. Still have the report to be prepared, may be do a bit now and a bit during the 2pm break. I decided to go to the chinese take out place across the street to get some quick bite to eat. I can bring back and eat at the desk and go through the remaining emails and start the preparation.
I walked across the road to “Kung Pao Panda”, original Chinese restaurant. “Original?” I wondered, given that the name is obvious reference to Kung Fu Panda. 
“For here or to go?” asked the short Chinese girl at the front desk. I said I want to take out. I placed my order and sat on the bench waiting for my food.
I was fidgeting with my phone to check my messages when I overheard “.. you have to add in my bed at the end” and then some giggles. Something else and then more giggles. I stuck my head up to see that it was from the table on the other side of the desk. 
“ Your patience will pay off! In bed” the girl on the left bursted out laughing.. “ Whats in yours?”
They were checking the sayings in the chinese fortune cookies.
“ Best time are yet to come! in bed”, the other next to her read and bursted out laughing.
“Of course they are to come, because you are still a virgin”, joked her friend sitting across from her.
“Do you believe in these?” said the first one. 
“Sometimes they do come true, like this one time..”
I rolled my eyes and felt sorry for these girls. If only you have to search for your fortunes in these cookies, you might as well die in your sleep. I wonder if the fortune cookies are the reasons casinos are filled with Chinese people. They probably read the lucky numbers printed on these cookies and flood to the casino to try them. What a stupid thing to do? Fortune cookies aren’t even invented by Chinese. We been fooled all around. Dumb!
“Here you go Miss, enjoy your lunch! Don’t forget the fortune cookie, who knows what you get in it”, said the server who brought out my food.
“No thanks, I am good without the cookie”, I said.
“oh one more thing, you have been given a free lunch today, our promotion. I just need your email id for our records”, he said handing over a pen and a book. It seemed legitimate as there were other email ids on the page. So I quickly scribbled my email and took the food back to my desk. I thanked him for the offer. I smirked thinking about that idiot who said there is no such thing as a free lunch. He was obviously oblivious of this place.
Back at my desk, I quickly ate the lunch, caught up more emails, before my 1 pm meeting. The usability study was not bad; it was progress from the previous week, but still needs lots of fixes and there is little time. I gave them a stern warning to bring up their design faster.
Now is the time to prepare for my one on one. I need to put together what the updates are from the entire week, especially the previous three meetings and present them in a neat format for my mercurial boss to understand. I quickly outlined what to present and pulled out a PPT template to work on, when I heard a new mail sound on my computer. I opened the email and it was from the Chinese place across the street. The message was sweet, though sorta cliched, “Thank you for your purchase, we appreciate your patronage. Enjoy your meal. Don’t forget the fortune cookie!” "Whats these folks obsession with fortune cookie" I thought and went back to preparing my presentation. I was just about to finish the presentation, my computer started acting weird. Some keys were not working. “R” was replaced with “U” and vice versa. “V” and “B” were getting mixed up. What was going on? I thought I was hallucinating. But I wasn’t, they really were getting interchanged. What was going on? The screen started flickering. Oh no this is not good. I saved my presentation, just in case my computer crashes. I called Mariame to take a look at it, and she confirmed what I saw, that the letters were interchanged but was of no further help. She suggested I restart the machine. I did it, and it seem to work. She was very proud of her suggestion and gave a lecture on how restarting fixed everything. I thanked her and was back to my presentation. As soon I opened the presentation, I had the same problem. This is not good, I only have 40 mins to prepare my slides. My boss will be very unhappy if i don’t finish it up. In a fits of rage, I slammed the monitor from the side. It stopped flickering. I was ecstatic. But the ecstasy was momentary, as flickering started again. Suddenly a pop up window appeared that said “Your computer may be infected with virus, please run virus scan.” No, not now. I have no time for it. I ignored the warning and continued working. Suddenly the screen froze. I was on my nerves, “Fuck it!” I yelled in desperation. The virus scan over took the machine and was now running the scan, while i fidgeted with my thumbs. Two minutes later, the computer crashed. 
God, why does it have to be like this? I begged IT to come fix the issue before the meeting. IT would send someone to look over the issue in an hour. I said I need it urgently. “Will see what we can do” was their answer. Why is this happening to me? Why now? Cant it happen some other time? My mind was racing to find answers on how I can finish my presentation. I felt helpless as I could come up with no answers. I couldn’t help but get frustrated, tears almost rolled off my cheek. Is this what Mariame was talking about me being frustrated and mad? Is this the “interesting” day that Wayne mentioned about? 
Thankfully IT sent the service guy quickly. He scanned the computer and found something. He said he can fix in 10 mins. I thanked him profusely and waited for him to fix. As he fixed the issue, I wondered what could it be that caused the issue. I couldn’t come up with anything. I was staring at my desk when i saw the fortune cookie. Out of curiosity I took it and was about to open when the IT guy said, “There, you have it. Everything restored back to normal. Do you know the root cause? This email, from a Chinese place called ‘Kung Pao Panda’. Thats the one that created issue. Well, its taken care of now and you have a wonderful day.”
I was dumbstuck, how come an innocent email like that create such a havoc. Wondering on that, I opened the fortune cookie and it said: “There is no such thing as a free lunch” I laughed so hysterically that Mariame came running to check on me.