Very Bad Billionaires (13 page)

Sprint

Jalicia

I follow her into her office. As she said, there's her workstation. Then, there's another work station with a Mac Mini hooked up to a Thunderbolt display. Yum. I love working with Mac products, because they are so sleek.

She logs me into the testing account, and I'm given a blue exercise ball to sit on. "You can put in a request for a normal chair, but in Star, the exercise ball is standard issue. It's a sedentary job, so T-minus wants us to be as active as possible. You can request a standing or walking desk, but I get sore if I stand for too long. My productivity takes a nosedive if I have a walking desk, so it's easiest to work while sitting. The company does pay for a gym membership. All of us have a membership to the gym downstairs, so you'll probably be sweating next to the VP of marketing sometime soon if you want to use it. She's a fitness fanatic, and she's always cycling right after work."

I nod.

Aurelia pulls up a test plan on the computer. "I'm going to have you work on some stuff that we've already pushed through our main pass of QA. What we want to do today is just do the same thing in Safari."

"Writing the test plan is the hard part, anyway." We smile at each other in a moment of perfect understanding.

"Yup." She clicks to get open Safari. "How familiar are you with Macs?"

I got one with my scholarship when I entered college. "Very. My personal machine is a Mac."

"Good. I'm just going to make a copy of the test plan and put it in the same file for our test plans for this development phase." She clicks around on the desktop and types a bit. "All done. This computer is all yours for the rest of the work day. All of us work 9-6 or 10-7, so I'll be in the office to help if you run into anything that you don't understand. You have a background in this, though, so I imagine that you'll do pretty well right off the bat."

This is scary. I feel like I'm being through into the deep end without a life preserver. Scratch that. I'm in the medium end with a life preserver. This is what I did for an entire summer anyway; I think that Aurelia wants me to walk the walk. If I didn't know my stuff, I'd drown right now. But because I do, this will go a lot better.

I work methodically through the test plan, taking the exact path that she did. Aurelia is wonderful on her documentation, so it's easy for me to pull up her bug reports and see what went wrong. She also has excellent step-by-step processes for testing, so it's a delight to use her test plan.

I work nonstop for the next few hours, taking a couple bathroom breaks and drinking a little water from the water fountain next to the bathroom. I'm in the zone, partially because Aurelia is behind me and this is a test of my abilities. It's a pretty easy test, honestly. I am trying some stuff, like the difference between POST and GET, and I'm plugging in stuff like code injections into all the fields. It looks good for right now, with the only bugs being the ones that she reported. There's only one major one. There are some visual issues in Safari, so I write up low-priority bug reports. Those are the kind of things that get worked on if there's nothing else for the developers to do. It's far more important for them to focus on Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome. Safari doesn't have as much market share as it could, and Opera, which is my favorite browser, barely has any market share at all. I might be the only person in the world who uses it, it feels like.

At the four-hour mark, Aurelia taps my shoulder. "Can I see?" I stand up and gently roll my ball away from the desk. She pulls the monitor up so that she can read through what I've done. "Looks good. I like the way that you've tested it in multiple time zones. We've had MTZ problems before, but we tend to have a bias towards testing only between US time zones. Good catch on seeing the weird thing that happens if you cross the GMT line."

I smile at her. It's good to be appreciated. "Yeah, I had to do extensive MTZ testing when we were focusing on working OCONUS."

"OCONUS?"

"Outside of the continental United States. It's a massive pain in software."

She nods. "Sounds like it. Your work looks really good. I'll email HR and ask them to send you an offer. We'll pay you for today's time as if you're a contractor, but we'll help you onboard soon. Does that sound good to you?"

I nod.

She holds out her hand. "I'll see you very soon. It was a pleasure. I have the feeling that you're going to have a big footprint at Star." She smiles a kind smile that crinkles up the corners of her eyes.

I shake her hand and beam back at her. She's so nice, and I have the warm fuzzies. "It was so nice to meet you, too," I gush. Ah, pull back! Be professional! "I would really love to work here."

"Do you know your way out?"

"Yeah, I think I do. I'll look forward to hearing from you." I give her a little wave, then I spin and head out the door with my padfolio tucked under my arm.

First stop is definitely the Pinkberry next door.

Pinkberry

Jalicia

I grab some chocolate hazelnut with little mochi bits and strawberries on top, and I sit down and decompress from the stress of that interview and sprinting through all that work. I dig my spoon into the frozen yogurt, and I let the sweet chocolate taste roll on my tongue. It's like eating Nutella. The chewy mochi and the tart strawberry complement the yogurt's flavors perfectly. I can’t really afford this kind of extravagance, but I deserve it today. I take out my phone. I check my email, and I already have a written offer from HR.

Dear Jalicia Kingston,

Thank you for applying to our company. We are writing to tell you that we want to move forward with your candidacy for our open QA role. Please call me at 310-555-7890 in order to discuss your start date and compensation.

Sincerely,

Maria Gomez

Technical Recruiter

Star
 

Eek! They must really want me if they processed me so soon. Maybe they're short on people. I plug in my headphones to my iPhone to use the microphone, and I walk outside, my yogurt in one hand. It is melting rapidly.

"Hello?"

"Hello. This is Maria Gomez at Star. How can I help you?"

"Hi!" I say brightly. "I'm Jalicia Kingston."

"Oh, Jalicia! I'm fine. How are you?"

"I'm great. I just got your email about a position."

"Excellent. I wish all candidates were as prompt as you. We're offering $60,000 a year starting, although we tend to give raises very rapidly. You’ll have full benefits from day one, of course. Dental and vision, 401k, health insurance, whatever you need.”

Women don't negotiate. Women don't get the corner office because they don't negotiate. And they called me in really fast. But I'm really nervous, and I need a job, especially if I'm going to throw cash down at Pinkberry. Plus it would be nice to have a job with benefits. "Sixty thousand sounds great. When can I come in?"

"I have some time right now, if you're nearby. Just come into our lobby and turn left. I'm the first office. We'll just sign some paperwork, get it signed off on by Christopher, and then you'll be all set."

"Christopher? The founder?"

"Yup."

Wow, I didn't know that HR stuff had to go through him. But heck, who am I kidding, I'd take this job at fifty or forty or even thirty at this point. "I'll be right in."

I hop in, and I still have on my visitor's badge from this morning. I wave at the receptionist, and she smiles as I go through the lobby and head for the fifth floor for the second time today. When I get to the fifth floor, I turn left just like Maria told me to, and there she is. She's a petite Latina with a no-nonsense black business suit. She has on a flowery blouse under it, though, which tells me she isn't as strait-laced as her serious Nanette Lepore suit would suggest.

"Sit down, sit down." She flaps her hand at me, and I take a seat in one of her chairs. "I have a whole bunch of paperwork, but I could do this in my sleep. Just sign all the places that are highlighted."

She hands me what feels like a ream of paper, and I flex my wrist to gear it up for a signing frenzy. I sign or initial every page of all the paperwork. She's clicking away on her computer.

"Done."

She turns around on her cherry red exercise ball, and she flips through all the papers quickly. "Looks good. I'll have Christopher sign off on these tonight, and you can come back tomorrow at 9 AM. I’ll tell Aurelia to onboard you. Here’s a check for your work today.“

My eyes widen as I see the $200 check being handed to me like it’s nothing for today’s handful of hours of work. Maybe to them it isn’t, but it’s my grocery money for tonight. “I’ll see you then." We wave goodbye to each other.

I feel like I’m walking on air. Everything is coming up roses. I get my little powder blue Prius out of the parking garage, and I brave the Los Angeles traffic as I take the 110 home to Torrance.

First Day

Jalicia

It’s bright and early. I head to the same lobby, say hello to the receptionist, and I wait for Aurelia to show up. She shows up on 9 AM on the dot, just like yesterday.

“Come on. Maria put in the work order for your desk and machine yesterday, so your work station should be good to go.”

I follow her to the elevators, and she takes me into the office. After a few turns that I’m pretty sure I’m not going to remember, we’re at an area that has my name on a blue label.

“Wow. You guys work really fast.”

“Have to run to keep up around here.” She laughs. “Anyway, we’re going to focus you on testing all of our stuff on Macs. We’ve been shamefully negligent about Mac users, though a significant amount of the United States uses them now. You’ll have some opportunities to test mobile, as well. How good are you on iOS devices or maybe Android?”

I shrug. “I’m fine. If I don’t know something, I’ll look it up. Google or Stack Overflow will probably have the answer.”

“We like that kind of can-do attitude around here.” She gives me a wink. “Here’s a folder with some basic information. Your first day, you’re probably going to spend a lot of time putting in all of your information for HR. Go wild reading through our handbook. I put a few test plans in your folder on the shared network. When you’re ready to really dig in, go ahead. If you do the kind of clean, efficient work that you did yesterday, you’ll be a star. We don’t tend to start too early around here. A lot of us work 9 to 5 or 10 to 6, but not everybody keeps those hours. We’ve got a sort of lunch/brunch scheduled at noon so that everyone can meet you. We have a thing about donuts and Mountain Dew around here, so we always bring them. I’m having it catered by Chipotle, though, so you can always eat healthier stuff for your real lunch. Are you vegetarian?”

“No. I used to be, though. How did you know?” That’s bizarre.

“No, no, I had no idea. It’s just that I’ll order sofritas if you needed it. Don’t worry about it, though. We tend to order all the meat options, with a double portion of barbacoa.”

I nod. “Anything sounds fine.”

“Great. As you can see, we have an open floor plan. My place is over there.” She points to a desk a few feet away. “So if you have a question, seriously don’t hesitate to ask. I’m right here. I’ll let you go through all the stuff that you have to do for HR, though.” She walks to her desk and puts on her headphones.

I turn back to my computer. On the computer is a Post-It note that says, “jalicia/W3lc0m3!” I guess that’s my username and password.

I touch the Magic Trackpad, and the computer comes to life. I log in with my new credentials, and the first thing that pops up is Zen Payroll. I navigate through the whole process of onboarding and filling out my W-4 and all that. The ream of papers I signed yesterday apparently wasn’t everything.

When I’m done, I pick up my phone and check Facebook before cracking open the employee handbook that’s at my station. It’s enclosed in an innocuous black binder, but when I open it the tabs are multi-colored. That would not be remarkable if they weren’t also printed labels. Someone was really anal retentive with this thing. I read through it. It’s ok. Blah blah, unlimited vacation, blah blah, confidentiality, blah blah, holidays. Pretty standard stuff.

By the time that I am done actually reading the handbook, it’s 11:50, almost time for my intro brunch.

Someone knocks on my desk. My eyes come up. It’s a tall white guy, probably more than six feet tall. He’s got dark blonde hair and hypnotic blue eyes.

“Hey.”

“Hay is for horses.”

“Whatever you say, babe.”

I narrow my eyes. “I’m not your babe. You have really lame pickup lines.”

“Holy shit, woman.” He holds his hands up. “I was just wondering if you wanted help finding the conference room for your brunch, since you’re new here.”

I consider it for a minute. I was going to pull it up on the computer, but I’m not sure that it’s even mapped out on there.

“Ok.” I grab a notepad and my phone, and I follow him as he walks towards a hallway.

“So, Jalicia…what do you like to do in your spare time?”

“Um,” I say. I bite my lip. “I like fishing, I guess. I’m a big reader.”

“That’s cool. I like fishing, too.”

This is kinda weird. Is he trying to pick me up, or is he being friendly? I don’t know.

We get the conference room, and he heads towards the computer that’s hooked up to the projector. I choose the seat that’s furthest away from him.