Frankly Told: A Dream Away
The meeting room was bathed in the afternoon sun, shining through the curtain wall glass of the corporate building. It’s warmth was diligently carried out through the air conditioning vents but it didn’t stop the occupants from striping down to shirts and blouses.
The meeting had been a mixture of hiccups and occasional black outs, still, they soldiered on. The international team was nothing but floating heads on the screen with their names highlighted beneath them. The local team sat around the long table facing the screen on the wall. A new normal that had been necessitated by past world events. Among them, she sat, the only one with her laptop open, it being the main device for navigating the high-stakes meeting.
“So as you can see there on the presentation, the projected mark-ups are proving to show amazing margins and with the aforementioned timelines, there is certainty on those ROIs,” her boss continued his thoughts. “All we are asking is for your support in this and given our lengthy portfolio, I guarantee you and your investments are in good hands.”
There is silence in the room.
“So… what do you say?” he placed the ball squarely in their court.
The heads in the room all swivelled to face the screen.
“Well…” the spokesperson on the international team started. “That was quite the lengthy presentation. I will admit you have kept our, well, if I am to just speak from myself, my attention throughout. General comments, yes. I like it. The idea, the pitch, the data… the whole spread.”
In the room, there were barely audible sighs of relief. Some nodding heads and they looked at each other, pleased that months of work culminated in this positive moment.
“I would, however,” the spokesperson, poked at their premature elation. “Like to see something I had noted down. One of the data points. I found great interest in that particular point. Maybe you can just go back and expound a little on it. As I understand it, time was the constraint you were trying to beat but let’s just circle back and highlight it.”
The boss gestured to her to respond quickly and jump the slides backwards. Under the sudden glare of the spotlight, she panicked. The computer seemed to read the signs and hiccuped, right at that moment and the screen went blue. She exhaled as her nerves shot at a hundred sparks a minute. Apologies poured from her mouth like a waterfall and wishes that the ground would open up plastered her mind like a billboard.
“Just a minute, we are having some technical difficulties,” the boss swooped in, slightly annoyed. “It’s funny for a team so competent, you would not think that we would trip at the finish line.”
“Maybe you can try to highlight what you remember so we can just project the slide right where you want it,” the boss chuckled trying to quickly move along.
He muttered under his breath to her. Something about hurrying up and disappointment. Sweat began to coat her forehead in a glistening layer as she damn near punched holes in the keyboard typing and searching for the document. It took all of some three minutes to do it but eternity could have been compared in weight for her in that moment.
She exhaled as she presented the screen before the spokesperson said a word.
“That one, exactly!” he exclaimed. “How did you know?”
She chuckled along with the team.
“Ah, that’s her,” the boss chipped in. “Our last man in the team. A junior but when she locks in, you know she is always on the case. Never misses a beat. I don’t know what is happening today. Maybe it’s a little fatigue but all is well, you know women are strong, like cockroaches; can’t beat them down. We promise no such mishaps once the project is-”
“Excuse me?” her voice cut clearly through the air like a red-hot knife.
He looked at her as if to quiet her down.
“You know what? No,” she protested and pushed back her chair. “I’m not going to have you pushing your thumb down on me anymore. I’m done. Yes, I am tired. Did you stop to think why that is? Maybe, your pestering of me that had me up until 3am, trying to finish this whilst you blissfully slept.”
“The number of times you sent me to the field to collect all this with my own resources. The fact that coming back to the office meant that I would be back at work so no breaks. Actually, it didn’t matter because you kept pushing me even when it was past office hours to beat these nearly impossible deadlines. If I had assistance from my seniors, maybe it would have been better but that doesn’t matter now.”
“Can we just-?” the boss, on edge, tried to steer the conversation back.
“No, “we can’t just…” she mocked and turned to the screen. “If you are going to invest in this, at least know what you are investing in. I have been labouring like a donkey for these past months alone on a subject that is way beyond my scope and one little mistake at the end of it is all it took to bring up me, my gender and say things like that.”
Turning back to him, “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“I. Am. Your. Boss!” he said, raising his voice over hers.
“Not anymore,” she curtly retorted. “I quit!”
“You have no future in this industry if you step out of this meeting,” he shot at her back, as she stepped to the door.
“You know, I thought so too for the longest time,” she stopped at the threshold. “But… you don’t run my life, nor my success. If it’s anything you have shown me, it’s that there is no future here. You wrung my desire to be here so dry. You made me hate this thing I grew up dreaming of. I am better off asleep at home because here, it will always just be… A dream away.”
