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“Don’t go,” he said, casting a wry glance at me. “It’s not lotus flowers and beautiful girls dancing all day long. Instead, it’s old men in nappies telling you to shut up and clean other people’s toilets. It was awful,” he said, his voice shuddering. “I can barely deal with my own crap, let alone other people’s!”
He shook his head ruefully.
“I appreciate your honesty,” he said turning back to me. “Do you think these bugs can be fixed or is this project a lost cause?”
I thought of Alex, who’d been on all-night benders of coke and whiskey, trying to figure out the source of the problems but unable to make headway.
“I’m thinking of bringing in someone else to have a look at it,” I said. “If we can only smooth out this wrinkle with Apple, we’re good to go.”
“Tell me again what the app will do?”
“It uses the latest AI technology to read your email for you and sifts out the most important mail from less important ones, syncing with your calendar to highlight important email coming in, to ensure you don’t miss anything.”
Aaron nodded. “And it’s different from similar apps how?”
“Our AI is much faster and better than the one our competitors are using. It simulates your reading, copying the way you read and based on that, it knows what you prioritize, even better than you do”.
“I’m not surprised to hear that at all,” he snorted. “Let’s keep going with this. If we get it right, this could be huge. We can meet again at the end of the month and make another call.”
Just like that, the crisis was averted.
I went looking for Alex to share the good news with him. He was not in his office, but I could see that he had been there recently. The three enormous screens that dominated his desk were buzzing and blinking and the surface of the floor was covered in paper, books, old take away containers and mugs of old coffee.
I called Maisie over.
“What the hell is going on here?” I asked her, opening the door for her to see.
She whistled. “Man, it smells like something died in here.” She glanced at me. “Alex doesn’t like people coming in here and that includes the cleaners. He says we mess with the feng shui.”
I picked up an ashtray and sniffed it. Weed. As I’d thought.
“When was the last time you saw him?
She had to think about it. “Monday, when I left for work. He was still here,” she said. She looked at her watch. “It’s only ten o’clock, he’s probably still on his way in.”
I called his mobile, and when he picked up, I could tell he was still asleep.
“Alex! What time are you coming into the office.”
I was greeted by a huge yawn.
“What time is it?”
“Ten.” I tried to keep my cool. Maisie was standing behind me. “We need to talk about the app.”
“Fuck the app,” said Alex and blew out air. “It’s either me or it. That’s where we are now.”
“Fine,” I said. “Come get your stuff. I’ll find someone else who can do it.”
I hung up.
Maisie stared at me open-mouthed. “Did you just fire him?”
Alex had been with the company for years and I’d kept him on out of loyalty, long after his drug use had started impacting on his work and productivity. I’d brought on other programmers like Corey to cover for him, turning a blind eye when Alex came drunk to work or didn’t show up for a few days in a row. I’d talked to him about it, once even trying to get him into rehab but he had physically pushed me away and I’d had enough.
I walked up to where Corey was playing a game on his computer.
“Don’t you have work to do?” I asked him.
