“You ever get the feeling that people have overstayed their welcome? I just wish she’d take the hint and quit.”
“You could fire her,” Jason said. “That is, in fact, allowed.”
“It’s complicated.” Mack sighed. “I wish I could just fire her but…I don’t think I can, unfortunately.”
“Then make her quit.”
“How?”
Jason shrugged. “Things could start getting uncomfortable for her around here. You know? I mean, look, Mack, she is definitely someone whose utility has diminished.”
That was a bold assessment from someone who’d been there only a few weeks, but what Jason was saying was true—Isabel’s utility had diminished, and the fact that they were sitting here talking about her when they could be talking about something else meant that she was taking up way too much space in his brain. He hadn’t texted her since yesterday, when she’d told him she wasn’t feeling well and had gone home, and there was a tiny part of him that had been hoping she just wouldn’t show up today so he would have an excuse to be mad at her. Suddenly, he had an idea.
“Sabrina,” he said. “She works for Isabel. You know who she is?”
Jason looked out onto the office floor. “Oh—yes. Dark hair, Asian?”
Mack nodded. “Right. That’s it. Let’s get her in here.”
Jason smiled. “Shall I go get her?” He slipped out of Mack’s office. Mack wasn’t totally sure what he was going to do once Sabrina came in, but he wanted to make sure that Isabel saw Jason bringing Sabrina into his office. Two minutes later, they walked in. She was pretty, Mack thought, despite the fact that she looked tired—he usually didn’t like women wearing a lot of makeup, but as he noted the circles under her eyes and the general pallor of her skin, he thought she could probably use some. He realized he didn’t know much about her; she was one of the quiet ones, the kind who came in and did her work and left. There weren’t too many like her. Most people who worked at TakeOff were joiners, people who organized softball leagues and special T-shirt days. He had tried to encourage an atmosphere of extracurricular activities, and if the [email protected] email traffic was any indication, it was working. If you read any book on startups, you knew that the most successful ones had the strongest company culture. It started with a motto, something that told people why they were there, infused them with a sense of purpose. It had taken Mack a few months to develop his, but it was something he was proud of: “Do good work, and the work will help the good.” He had it printed on the TakeOff T-shirts and on the mugs in the kitchen, and every new employee got a little framed letterpress placard with the slogan to put on his or her desk. He had considered writing a longer mission statement but figured that if he could encapsulate what they stood for in a few words, then why not.
“Sit down,” he said to Sabrina, gesturing to the chair next to Jason, who was still standing. Sabrina sat. She was wearing a gray wool sweater whose sleeves she kept tugging over her hands, and she was barely making eye contact. He smiled, he hoped reassuringly, and said, “It’s all good—you look nervous.”
“Oh—I just…well, I’ve never actually been in your office,” she said. She looked around. “I mean, I’ve seen it from the outside, of course.” Mack smiled. Okay, she was calming down.
“We just wanted to check in,” Jason said. He sat down on the couch. “You know, see how things were going.”
She glanced at both of them. “They’re going well. I think? I mean, do you guys not think they’re going well?”
Mack waved his hand. “No, no, they’re going great. Our numbers are up, we’re very happy with those. We just meant more like…how things are going. Are you happy here?”
She smiled. “Oh yes, of course,” she said. “I’ve never been happier, in fact.”
When Jason came by to bring her into Mack’s office, Sabrina had her headphones on and was deep in a series of retweets about the TakeOff app. This was part of her job: to retweet, sometimes with a funny comment, anything positive that people were saying about the app, and so she didn’t notice Jason was there until he tapped her on the shoulder and she jumped and took off her headphones. “Whoa, you scared me,” she said, and he smiled—a smile that she couldn’t tell the meaning of. Was it a wolfish “you had lunch with Katya Pasternack and we know everything” smile, or was it an “everything’s fine, I’m just randomly coming over to your desk to say hello” smile, or was it something else altogether?
“Got a sec? Mack and I want to chat with you. In his office.”