Jason shook his head vigorously. “No, no, no!” he said. “That is the wrong attitude. This is just the battle. We are going to fight a war. There is no fucking way that bitch is going to ruin everything you’ve built with some bullshit accusation.”
Mack was a bit taken aback by Jason’s vehemence, but he tried not to show it. As much as he hated Isabel right now, he was still sensitive about other people criticizing her. Even if things had gone badly, it was still a reflection on him that he had been with her. At the same time, he didn’t want Jason to be able to tell that it bothered him. “Right,” he said. “But how do we do that?”
“Well…there’s a way of framing this. Having a ‘source’ call up Katya and tell her the ‘real deal’ about what happened. You know, that an employee who is a little…unstable went a little crazy at an event the other night, and we’re all worried about her and we’re going to try to get her some help.”
“I knew there was a reason I hired you,” Mack said. “That is fucking genius.”
Jason smiled. “This isn’t my first rodeo.”
“I probably don’t want to know about your other rodeos, do I.”
“Let’s just say that I am familiar with the dark arts of media manipulation. The key is making reporters think that they’re getting a scoop or, like, the real story. It’s just a game to them.”
“They’re the worst,” Mack said. “It’s not a fucking game to me! This”—he gestured to the entire office—“is not a game. It’s like people don’t understand that.”
“There are always going to be people who don’t understand,” Jason said. “Fuck those people. We don’t need those people. Those people have nothing else in their lives worth living for, so they just exist to tear people like us down. It’s bullshit.”
Mack smiled a sincere smile for what felt like the first time that day. Thank God at least Jason understood him. “You’re right,” he said. “This is bullshit. I know it’s bullshit. You know it’s bullshit. So wait. Who’s going to call Katya back?”
“I’ll handle it,” Jason said. “I can even do it from your office, if you want.”
“I mean, sure,” Mack said. “Want to do it now?”
“Yeah, let’s get ’er done. What’s her number?” Mack gave it to him and he dialed. He set the phone down on the desk and put it on speaker. “Hello, Katya?”
“Hello, yes, this is Katya. Who’s calling?”
“Yes, hi. This is Jason Schneider from TakeOff. I understand you had some questions about an event we had the other night?”
“Yes, I did, and—”
Jason interrupted her. “Okay. I’m happy to talk to you, but everything I say has to be attributed to a source at TakeOff. I don’t want my name anywhere near the story. Is that understood?”
There was a pause. “Can I ask why?”
“When you hear what I have to say, you’ll understand why it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to put my name in the story.”
“I’d really prefer to speak on the record.”
Jason rolled his eyes at Mack as if to say, Can you believe this shit? “It’s unfortunately not a negotiation. Either you agree to my terms or I hang up the phone.”
There was silence from the other end of the line, then: “Okay.”
Nice, Mack mouthed, and he high-fived Jason silently.
“Great,” Jason said. “So listen. Things got a little wonky the other night, but let me give you some background. The event was a good-bye drinks thing for one of our core employees, okay? And Mack got up to speak, you know, to toast this employee, and—”
“Who was it?” Katya said. Jason glanced at Mack, who raised his eyebrows. Did it matter if she knew it was drinks for Casper Kim? Probably not—the news that he’d left was going to be out there soon enough. And telling her might make her feel like they had given her a useful crumb of information.
“I’ll tell you off the record, okay? Like, you can’t publish his name in the piece—it’s not fair to drag him into this story.”
“Okay, fine,” Katya said.
“It was for Casper Kim, our head of product, who’s leaving.”
“Why is he leaving?” she asked. Jason glanced at Mack, who shook his head.
“I’m unfortunately not able to comment on confidential personnel matters,” Jason said.
“Can you tell me where he’s going?” she asked.
“Unfortunately, no,” Jason said. There was silence. He cleared his throat. “Anyway, so Mack got up in front of everyone to toast Casper, and then there was this…outburst by one of our employees. I’ll get to who it was in a moment, but first I want to make something clear: this particular employee has been a problem for us for a while.”
“A problem?” Katya said. “Can you be more specific?”
Jason sighed. “I can, but off the record. I just need to emphasize, again, how this cannot be coming from me. This is highly confidential information that is actually illegal for me to be sharing with you.”
“I get it,” Katya said. “And I appreciate your candor.”
“Okay. So it was Isabel Taylor, who has been an Engagement Ninja here for a couple years now. Her performance had been under review—she was showing up late for work or not at all, her work hadn’t been up to par, et cetera. We finally decided to layer her with one of her direct reports, which I think is what sent her over the edge.”
“Layer her?” Katya said.
“It just means that like…instead of firing someone, you hire or promote someone over them.”
“Ah. I see. Got it.”
“Right. So she seemed unhappy about that, but instead of dealing with it in a productive manner, she chose to lash out at Mack in a public setting. Which of course is highly inappropriate.”
“What did she say, exactly?”
“I don’t really remember every word she said. Something to the effect of ‘Mack sucks and I’m outta here.’”
“Hm,” Katya said. Jason looked at Mack. What did that “hm” mean? “So she didn’t say anything about, like, sexting or anything like that.”
Shit. How the fuck did Katya know about this? Mack waved his hands frantically and mouthed, No. Jason smiled and held up his hands and mouthed, I got this.