Weekly Progress Meeting
By: Franco Amati
Tags: Work, Meetings, Introvert, Fiction, Short Story

Weekly Progress Meeting

A short story

Photo by Ethan Sykes on Unsplash

My manager Addison Breakly had fire blue eyes. Her skin was pale like a paper towel. She lived in Brooklyn and was a 38-year-old hipster who was trying real hard to not get older. Addison was the most meticulously detail-oriented person that I had ever met. You could tell she loved being the manager.

She had only been the manager of VocaliSoft for a year, but I knew why she got the job. She was the gravitational center of socialization in our Manhattan office. Gossip was a passion for her. Talking with others, to others, for others, and about others was her life.

If there was ever a person who was my personality antithesis, it was her. While I wore my self-confidence like a see-through dress, Addison walked around wearing a terrifying chainmail of arrogance and pretension.

Being in her presence made me the most raw kind of uncomfortable. It was like her mere existence defied mine. Yet I was forced to have weekly meetings with her to talk about how I was doing. Progress meetings they were called. They were to help me track my professional development and provide a “positive springboard for self-improvement.” My ass.

Even the most pleasant of our conversations made my stomach turn. At best I’d leave a meeting with a mild urge to cry. At worst I’d have nightmares for days that involved Addison taking the form of a werewolf eating out my intestines.

I remember one of the more excruciating meetings. She scheduled it first thing in the morning, so I didn’t even have time to take a shit yet. We were to discuss the previous week’s onsite design review for one of our new product launches. We had been working on a new natural language recognition system for a notable insurance company.

Addison was unsatisfied with my level of preparation going into the three day review marathon. My presentations went well, but she was uncomfortable with how rushed everything was leading up to it. And she also felt that I overlooked many important details.

When it was time for our meeting, she filled a mason jar with ice water so that she could sip from it while she criticized me. She made me sit on a really low sofa in a room she called the The Sanctuary.

She meant for the room to have a calming vibe, but it had the same toxic fluorescent lighting and stale air that the rest of the office had. She sat on a swivel chair behind a desk so that the height of her eyes would be at least a foot above the level of mine. This way she could look down on me both literally and figuratively. She crossed her legs and placed her open laptop in front of her. She started the show with a big smile and by saying, “Hey, so, how are you?”

“Good. Busy week so far, but I feel like I’m making strides on all my projects. Especially now that we completed the initial design review,” I said.

“Yeah? So how do you think you’re doing on those updates that Dev wanted?”

“Um, okay I guess. I’m still unclear on a few things, but I have a to-do list of items I hope to close out in the next day or so.”

“Really? You know if you have ongoing questions like that, you should bring them up as soon as they arise. You shouldn’t really sit on them. The more time you let pass without clarification, the worst things will get.”

“I know, but I just wanted to kinda figure things out for myself first, make sure I knew what I was asking and determine if the solution wasn’t something obvious.”

She sat up and pushed the lid of her laptop down. “Leo, in this field nothing is obvious. Every question is one that you should try to get answered right away. If you have any doubt or uncertainty, you should immediately shoot an email to me or the Dev lead. Because we all need to be on the same page.”

I swallowed hard. “You’re right…,” I began, before she cut me off.

“See I feel that sometimes you’ll look at a problem and instead of immediately trying to clear up your uncertainty by reaching out to someone for an answer, you prefer to sit on it and reflect on the solution yourself. And because you’re still very new at this job, it takes you a lot longer to come to a solution.”

“That’s true,” I said, “but that has always been my process for learning. I tend to internalize the problem, reflect on it, and come up with a novel solution that’s original and creative. Something that is uniquely my own. I’d rather do that than bother other people and risk having them solve it for me or hold my hand through it.”

Her eyes widened. “Listen, we’re all professionals here. Don’t think of it as hand-holding, but rather allowing the experts, like myself, to lead you to a proper solution. That will end up saving us all time. It’ll help you ramp-up more efficiently and engage you in constructive problem-solving. Far better than allowing precious minutes, hours, and seconds to tick away while you meander around in your own head. Does the make sense?”

“Yes, makes sense. I’ll try to do that from now on.” I kept fighting back two urges. The first was to keep my arms crossed over my belly, and the other was to pick at what was left of my thumb’s cuticle.

“Okay, and the other thing I wanted to talk to you about is your quality control and your attention to detail. I noticed there’s a lot of things that just aren’t on your radar. You miss a lot of important details, and you make a lot of silly little mistakes that shouldn’t happen. I notice that you are a more holistic, big picture kind of person, and often what happens is you forget about the small important details that are really everything in our profession.”

I sat up, placing both of my restless hands on my legs in an attempt to keep them still. “Well, I try to make our designs sound natural and conversational,” I said. “I like to consider the context of how people will interact with our system and how they’ll behave when hearing a prompt, for instance. But you’re right, I need to be better at proofreading and catching sloppy mistakes.”

“Yes, because currently, the quality of your work is not good. And the time in which you’re completing tasks is too long. It’s not cutting it. You’re taking way too long on things, you’re not prioritizing, and you’re rushing when a deadline is near because you didn’t plan appropriately. And that leads to really terrible mistakes. The customer will not be satisfied if this is the level of product that you’re putting forth. You won’t last long in this field without being more detail-oriented.”

“Yes, you’re right, Addison. I’ll be sure to focus more on the fine-grained details. At the same time I’ll work more efficiently by seeking out help from the people who know the answers.”

“Good. This is not a time to be laid back. I can show you how to do things. But ultimately you can’t teach initiative. You have to find it in you to be more assertive and reach out in a clear and timely manner. Don’t rest on your laurels, and always speak up.”

“Okay.”

“Oh and speaking of that, I’d like to see more effort on your part when it comes to socializing and interacting with both your coworkers and the customers. We have a great group here who all have a vast amount of knowledge and perspectives. And we’re so lucky to work with such awesome customers who know so many great things about the business world. They have so much to teach you and you can learn a lot from all of them. That’s part of the great thing about being in the Manhattan office. The connections you’ll make. One of the best things about this place and why I love going to my job every day is because of the people here. You’re not going to get anywhere in this field if you don’t interact with the people. So, with that said, I’d like you to make more of an effort to get to know your colleagues. Go to lunch with us, join us for happy hours, attend our parties. It really helps to build cohesion. In the end it will benefit you greatly. I know you’re an introvert, and trust me, I know what that’s like. I can be very introverted myself sometimes too. Trust me, I need my alone time. I get it. But this is a field about connecting and communicating with people. So let’s make that happen. I don’t want to see you shut down and get quiet. I want you to have the energy to give an eight hour long design review and still be enthusiastic at the end of the day and go all out when you’re chatting with the customers during happy hours and be able to keep that up well into the night. That’s the kind of social stamina you’re going to need to develop if you want to make it here.

“All right, I’ll do what I can.” I could feel myself sinking slowly into a hole. Like I was turning to a grey mush and just oozing down into a dark pit. My words came out weak, and I just wanted the meeting to be over.

“Okay, so anything else you want to bring up or ask me?”

“No, that’s it. Thanks, Addison”

“Okay great. Thanks, Leo. Oh and don’t forget. Make sure you throw some time on my calendar for tomorrow afternoon so we can go over those variables. The ones I mentioned. We’ll need them to be sorted out by close of business, okay?”

“Right, will do.”

“Thanks.”