I Hear You: Six Months in Hell

The conference room smelled like new paint and broken dreams, though Cody wouldn’t recognize the second scent until much later.

“I’m just so excited to be here,” said the new boss, whose name was Patricia but who insisted everyone call her “Pat” in a way that suggested this informality was itself a leadership quality. She stood at the head of the table with the posture of someone about to sell you a timeshare. “I know change can be scary, but I really think we’re going to do amazing things together.”

Cody nodded along with the rest of the team. Pat seemed fine. Enthusiastic, maybe a little intense, but fine. It had been three months since Sarah left, and the team had been managing themselves pretty well, but sure, a new boss could be good. Structure. Direction. Someone to approve vacation requests without having to bother the CEO.

“Now, I want to be transparent with you all,” Pat continued, and Cody’s optimism flickered slightly at the word “transparent,” which in his experience was usually followed by something decidedly opaque. “My last position didn’t end the way I’d hoped.”

There it was.

“I was let go from Synergen Solutions.” Pat paused for effect, as if waiting for someone to gasp. No one gasped. Most people didn’t know what Synergen Solutions was. Cody thought it might be a made-up company name, like something generated by an AI that had only been trained on LinkedIn posts.

“It was a difference in vision,” Pat said, her voice taking on a rehearsed quality. “I wanted to invest in people, really build a team, you know? But they were very focused on short-term gains. Very corporate. I’m not like that. I believe in people.”

She said “I believe in people” the way a motivational poster might, if motivational posters could talk and make uncomfortable eye contact.

“Anyway,” Pat brightened, “that’s the past! I’m here now, and I’m just thrilled about what we’re going to build together. Now, I know Sarah did things a certain way—”

Cody glanced at Maya, sitting two seats down. Maya’s expression remained carefully neutral, but her pen had stopped moving.

“—and I’m not here to say Sarah’s way was wrong,” Pat continued, in a tone that absolutely suggested Sarah’s way was wrong. “But I think we can all agree that there’s room for improvement. Sarah was very... hands-off. Some might say too hands-off. I’m more of a collaborative leader. I like to be involved.”

Taylor, the senior developer who’d been with the company for four years, cleared his throat. “Sarah usually let us run our own projects and just checked in at milestones.”

“Right, exactly,” Pat said, nodding vigorously. “And that’s fine for some teams, but I think we can do better. I want to be a resource for you all. My door is always open.” She gestured to the office behind her, which had, until this morning, been a supply closet that the CEO had hastily converted by adding a desk and removing most of the supplies.

The meeting continued for another forty minutes. Pat talked about “synergy” and “moving the needle” and “getting everyone rowing in the same direction.” She mentioned Synergen Solutions twice more, both times clarifying that their approach had been “very shortsighted” and that “they just didn’t understand culture.”

Cody took notes dutifully, writing down phrases like “open communication” and “accountability” and, for reasons he couldn’t quite articulate, “hands-off???” with three question marks.

“One last thing,” Pat said as people started gathering their laptops. “I know I have big shoes to fill coming after Sarah.”

Maya’s pen snapped. Just cracked right in half. She stared at it like it had betrayed her.

“But I’m up for the challenge. I really pride myself on being a good judge of character—” Pat placed her hand over her heart, “—and I can tell this is a special team. We’re going to do great things.”

As they filed out, Cody fell into step with Maya.

“Seems fine,” he offered.

Maya looked at him like he’d just suggested the Titanic had been a successful voyage because most of the ship made it to the bottom intact.

“She mentioned her old job three times,” Maya said quietly.

“Transparency?”

“And Sarah five times.”

“She’s just—”

“On her first day, Cody. Her first day.”

Cody considered this. “Maybe she’s just nervous.”

Maya deposited the broken pen in the trash with the solemnity of a Viking funeral. “We’ll see.”

It took exactly four days for Cody to experience his first “I hear you.”

The incident began innocuously enough. The team had a system for tracking client requests—a simple shared spreadsheet that had worked perfectly well for two years. It wasn’t elegant, but it was functional, and more importantly, everyone understood it.

On Thursday afternoon, Cody opened the spreadsheet to log a new client request and found that it had been transformed into something resembling a NASA mission control dashboard. There were colors. So many colors. Cells were merged in ways that suggested a deep misunderstanding of how spreadsheets worked. There was a tab labeled “SYNERGY METRICS.”

Cody stared at it for a full minute, then walked to Maya’s desk.

“Did you—”

“No,” Maya said, not looking up from her screen.

“Do you know who—”

“Yes.”

“Is it—”

“Yes.”

Cody found Pat in her office, which still faintly smelled like the industrial cleaning supplies it had recently housed.

“Hey Pat, quick question about the client tracking sheet.”

Pat looked up, beaming. “Oh good! You noticed! I spent half of yesterday on that. I just thought, you know, we could be doing this so much better. More visual, more data-driven. I added some formulas that’ll help us track velocity and throughput. At Synergen we had something similar, though honestly, this is probably better. I’ve learned a lot since then.”

“Right,” Cody said slowly. “The thing is, we didn’t really need—I mean, the old system was working fine for what we needed.”

“Oh, I totally hear you,” Pat said, leaning back in her chair. The phrase landed in the room with a weight that felt disproportionate to its syllables. “I really do. And that’s fair feedback. You know what this is really about? I just need to delegate better. I see something that could be improved and I just jump in, you know? I take on too much. It’s something I’m working on.”

Cody blinked. “But... nobody asked you to work on the spreadsheet.”

“Exactly!” Pat pointed at him like he’d just solved a difficult riddle. “That’s exactly what I mean. I should have come to you first, gotten your input, delegated it to someone on the team. Instead I just did it myself. That’s my problem—I’m too much of a doer.”

“I’m saying we didn’t need it done at all.”

“And I’m hearing you,” Pat said, nodding seriously. “Communication is so important. I should have communicated that I was working on this. That’s on me.”

Cody felt like he was having a conversation in a dream, where the words were all English but the meaning kept slipping away like soap in a bathtub.

“So... should we switch back to the old version?”

“Oh, let’s give this one a try first! I think once everyone gets used to it, you’ll see the value. Change is always hard at first. Sarah was very resistant to change too—no judgment, just observation.”

Cody returned to his desk and stared at his computer screen.

“How’d it go?” Maya asked.

“I think I just had a stroke.”

“What’d she say?”

“She said she hears me and needs to delegate better.”

Maya’s fingers paused over her keyboard. “Delegate what?”

“The thing nobody asked her to do.”

“Ah,” Maya said, resuming typing. “Yeah, that’s going to be a thing, isn’t it?”

Cody opened the new spreadsheet, with its seventeen colors and merged cells and “SYNERGY METRICS” tab. In the old version, adding a client request took about thirty seconds. In this version, he clicked through three dropdown menus before giving up and just emailing himself a note.

“Yep,” he said to no one in particular. “That’s going to be a thing.”

The email arrived on a Friday, which Cody would later recognize as Pat’s preferred day for announcements that would ruin everyone’s weekend.

Subject: Exciting News - Growing Our Team!

Hey team!

I’m thrilled to announce that we’re hiring for the Client Services Associate position! I know we’ve been stretched thin (I see you all working so hard!) and I’m committed to building out our team with top talent.

I really pride myself on being a good judge of character, and I have a strong feeling we’re going to find someone amazing. I’m personally reviewing all applications and will be conducting the interviews myself. At Synergen, I built an incredible team—though they didn’t always appreciate my hiring choices, which is part of why things didn’t work out there. But I’ve learned so much from that experience!

Stay tuned!

Pat

P.S. - Sarah never really focused on hiring the right people, so this is a big priority for me.

“Did Sarah not focus on hiring?” Cody asked Maya, who had been with the company longer.

“Sarah hired twelve people in three years. Eleven are still here.”

“Who’s the one who left?”

“Retired.”

“Ah.”

Over the next two weeks, the team watched Pat’s hiring process with the detached interest of people observing a car slowly rolling toward a cliff. Pat had shortlisted five candidates and had insisted the team meet all of them for “culture fit” assessments.

Candidate one seemed promising until they mentioned they’d be unavailable for three months starting in January for a pre-planned trip.

Candidate two interviewed well until the technical test, where they asked if Excel and Word were “the same thing basically.”

Candidate three was perfect. Everyone liked candidate three. Candidate three had relevant experience, good references, and had asked thoughtful questions about the role.

Candidate four was Josh.

Josh arrived seventeen minutes late to his interview, wearing a bluetooth earpiece that he did not remove. His resume claimed five years of client service experience, but when Taylor asked him to describe his approach to difficult clients, Josh had said, and Cody would never forget this, “I just vibe it out, you know? Like, energy for energy.”

Candidate five was also good. Not as good as candidate three, but solid.

The team convened in the break room after the interviews.

“So we’re all in agreement?” Taylor said. “Candidate three, with candidate five as backup?”

Everyone nodded.

“Josh is a no, right?” Maya said. “Like, obviously a no.”

“The earpiece stayed in the entire time,” Cody said. “He took a call.”

“He took a call,” Taylor repeated, with the emphasis of someone still processing trauma.

The next Monday, Pat called a team meeting.

“I wanted to let you all know, I’ve made my decision on the hire.” She paused dramatically, as if announcing the winner of a reality show. “I’m going with Josh.”

The silence in the room was the kind usually reserved for funeral homes and libraries at closing time.

“Josh?” Maya said finally.

“I know he’s unconventional,” Pat said, and the word “unconventional” was doing more work than any word had ever done in the history of language, “but I just have this sense about him. I can read people, you know? It’s a gift, honestly. And Josh has this energy, this raw potential. Sometimes the best hires aren’t the obvious ones.”

“He was wearing a bluetooth earpiece,” Cody said.

“Fashion choice!” Pat said brightly. “I like that he’s not afraid to be himself.”

“He took a call during the interview.”

“Confidence!”

Taylor leaned forward. “Pat, with respect, the team really felt that candidate three was the strongest fit. They have direct experience with our client management system and—”

“I hear you,” Pat said, and Cody felt his stomach drop. “I really do. And I appreciate the input. This is actually a good learning moment for me—I need to get better at delegating the hiring process more. At Synergen, I did all the hiring myself, and while I was good at it, it maybe wasn’t the best use of my time. But for this one, trust me. I’ve got a good feeling about Josh.”

“So,” Maya said slowly, “you’re saying you need to delegate hiring more... but you’re overruling the team’s recommendation?”

“Yes! Exactly. Next time I’ll delegate more. But my gut is really saying Josh is our guy.”

“Your gut,” Cody repeated flatly.

“And my gut is rarely wrong.” Pat stood up, signaling the end of the meeting. “Josh starts Monday. I’m excited for you all to work with him. Oh, and he’ll need someone to train him on the systems. Cody, you’re good with training, right?”

“I—sure.”

“Great! This is going to be amazing. Way better than the team Sarah built. No offense to Sarah, but she didn’t really have an eye for talent.”

After Pat left, the three of them sat in silence.

“We’re fucked,” Maya said.

“So fucked,” Taylor agreed.

Cody pulled out his phone and typed a single text to his girlfriend: Remember how I said the new boss seemed fine?

The response came immediately: Oh no.

Yeah.

Through the glass wall of her office, they could see Pat on the phone, laughing, probably telling someone about her great hiring decision. She caught them looking and gave an enthusiastic thumbs up.

Cody returned it on autopilot, like a hostage blinking a message in morse code.

Monday was six days away. Josh would arrive in six days.

“Maybe it’ll be fine,” Cody said without conviction.

Maya stood up, pushed her chair in with excessive care, and said, “I’m updating my LinkedIn this weekend.”

“Same,” said Taylor.

Cody wanted to disagree, to insist they were overreacting. Instead he said, “Yeah. Same.”

Pat had been on the job for exactly nineteen days.

It felt like longer.