Chapter 2: The Problem

Every company has one employee who is the source of all bad things. I was that employee.

Welcome to Chapter 2 of my book, Will There Be Free Food? a series of comedic personal essays about existing as a socially inept young woman in the San Francisco tech scene in the early 2010s. Chapter 1 can be found here.

The Problem

“This is going to be one of those unfortunate conversations we’d both rather not have,” Ana said. She shut the conference room door behind her. Granted, a conference room at Articley looked more like a Ronald McDonald Playplace than anything office-related. I hadn’t even had time to sit down on the giant hand-shaped, lime green chair before I blurted out “Wait, am I being fired?”

“Kind of,” she said, her face showing just as much discomfort as I’m sure mine was . I could tell she had either never done this before, or specifically dreaded firing me because since day one at Articley, over a year ago, I had been routinely asking her if I was in danger of getting fired. “It’s not your performance, I wouldn’t even call it firing. We just need to eliminate one person from our entertainment team because we’re putting more focus into our gaming articles.”

Despite the fact that I had always feared this moment, I found myself in an unfamiliar state of mind: wanting to get information quickly and fix whatever I could without too much emotion.

“Do I get severance?” I asked.

“No.” 

It seemed a bit cruel to me that contractors who were paid so little and given no benefits would also not get severance. If anything we should have gotten more severance in the event that we were let go, as a consolation prize for not receiving benefits or a livable salary. But that wasn’t Ana’s fault, so I wasn’t going to press her on it.

“Can I leave early to tell my boyfriend?” My boyfriend at the time (now husband) Nick, was working on his own startup. Despite the fact that I barely made enough money to survive, Nick somehow made less. The two of us were living in the spare bedroom of a fifty-year-old alcoholic yoga teacher named Van who was born without a sense of smell. Van was almost never home, although occasionally we found him passed out on the floor in the hallway. (I know I’m not lavishing praise on Van here, but he was actually a great guy--certainly better than Nick’s previous roommate, who had a framed photo of George W. Bush on his wall and accused Nick of selling drugs because he once heard him “flushing the toilet suspiciously often.”) Technically Nick and I weren’t even supposed to live with Van. Every few weeks Van’s religious landlady would come around and make Van promise that he wasn’t renting out his spare room or keeping any “unmarried women” there. I had to keep all my clothes in a suitcase in the closet to avoid detection.

“Of course you can go see Nick,” Ana said. She was pretty familiar with Nick, not because she knew him (I don’t think they ever met) but because given that he was my best and possibly only friend in the city where I had only been living for a year, I talked about him constantly, both because I loved him and because it was a knee-jerk reaction to avoid giving any other men the impression that I was available.

“So should I pack up all my stuff now?” I asked. 

“You can work here for two more weeks,” Ana said. “We thought we’d give you some time to look for something else.”

Another concern popped up in my mind--one that I didn’t quite know how to articulate because I knew it could be awkward, but I would be kicking myself if this particular issue came up and I hadn’t said anything. “Just another thing,” I said, as I opened the conference room door to leave. “I know that when Kat left, everyone threw her a going-away party with a cake. I don’t know if I get a going-away party because I’m a contractor and I’m not really quitting, and I’m not requesting one at all, but just in case anyone tries to throw me one, can you let them know I have a gluten intolerance and I don’t eat cake so it would be better if they did, like, a cheese board?”