Beyond The Wave

It was my first day in my new job. I couldn’t have been more excited. I probably couldn’t have been more nervous.

I guess that’s why, as I was carrying the tray of drinks into the meeting room, I stumbled and produced a neat pile of broken cups, glasses and hot coffee on the floor. For a moment I froze as the room fell silent then I dropped to my knees. I was about to start collecting up the mess when my wrists were firmly grasped and I was turned around so I was facing the grasper. While it was not done in a particularly forceful way, it was clear that resistance was not an option.

I looked up at the person doing the grasping and then looked further up. I’m not particularly short but he was well over six foot and towered over me. Without releasing his grip, he had returned his attention to the other people in the meeting. “Excuse me,” he was saying with a small smile. “As you can see, we have a minor domestic crisis here. Could we take a short break whilst we get this sorted out?”

He paused for a moment. “Janet,” he went on. I recognised one of the two ladies who had interviewed me. “Would you take our guests to the kitchen and make some more coffee, please?”

As the other people started to disperse, he briefly looked down at me and gave me a reassuring smile. He looked as if he was advertising toothpaste with his long, wavy, blond hair, his gleaming teeth and his deep blue eyes that seem to bore right through me and out the other side. He was wearing a smart, dark suit that looked expensive and a beautiful kingfisher-blue silk tie. He waited until the other people had left the room then turned his attention back to me.

“Hello, I’m Tristram, he said, smiling down at me as I knelt in front of him. “I’m the managing director here. You must be Terrie, my mother’s new assistant.”

I burbled something incoherent along the lines of ‘I’m sorry and I want to crawl into a hole and die’.

“Enough,” he said, gently but firmly, cutting me off mid-burble.

My burbling ceased. He gently eased me to my feet. He was still looking down on me but it wasn’t quite as bad as before.

“First rule in a crisis. Stop and think. Do not panic. Do not make things worse.”

He paused for a moment to let this sink in.

“You have a mixture of boiling coffee and broken crockery on the floor. What do you not do?”

I didn’t know what he expected me to say so I said nothing.

“Let’s try an easier question. What’s going to happen if you put these in that mess?” I only noticed that he was still holding my wrists when he held my hands up in front of my face.

It was only then that I realised what I had been about to do.

“Good girl,” he said when he saw my reaction. “A crisis is a time for more thinking, not less. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.” I said avoiding his eye.

“Please look at me when I’m talking to you,” he firmly instructed me, giving my wrists a shake which, while not overly forceful, certainly succeeded in grabbing my attention.

I looked up and met his eye.

“What did I just say?”

I successfully repeated his words.

“Good girl,” he said again. It made me feel as if I was about six but I suppose that was fair enough in the circumstances. “Please always show me you’re listening when I’m talking to you in future by looking me in the eye.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, are you thinking clearly enough to clear up this mess without ending up in hospital?”

“Yes, sir.” Even though it was quite rude, I had to smile at that.

“Good girl!” he said with his own smile as he released my wrist. “Then, ‘Make it so!’”

I could tell it was a quote from the funny way he said it but I didn’t know where it came from. He strolled out to join the others in the kitchen whilst I started to clean up the mess. My ears burnt in embarrassment as I heard laughing and joking out there and I knew I was the butt of the joke.

Tristram came and found me at lunch time. I was sitting with Mary, his mother, who also worked as office manager. She was trying to explain something about the computer system and I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that she didn’t really understand it herself. “Come and join me for a sandwich,” he said.

I hesitated for a moment and his mother pulled him to one side and spoke to him.

“Please would you join me for a sandwich?” he said when he returned. I could tell that he had just been told off which I found slightly reassuring - somehow the fact that his mother could tell him off made him slightly less intimidating. “It will be a working lunch so the company will be paying.”

I accepted graciously. It looks like his mother had guessed what my problem was. I wasn’t going to have enough money for my bus fare if I bought a sandwich.

At least, that was the main problem.

“Right,” he said when he had ushered me into a smart little café. “What do you fancy?”

I froze. I just didn’t know where to start.

“Let me guess,” he said, studying me in a way that made me feel as if I was an item on the menu. You look like a cheese salad sandwich to me… with a little touch of their special mayonnaise… and probably a freshly squeezed orange juice.”

I just nodded. I wasn’t in any state to think and that sounded wonderful.

He placed our order and, I noticed, he ordered an Earl Grey tea for himself, then he returned his attention to me.

“I’m sorry about the coffee thing this morning,” I managed to say.

“Apology accepted,” he replied casually. “As it happens, it worked out quite well. The meeting was becoming a little fraught and the… intermission you triggered made them relax and I believe they gave away a little more than they intended.” He thought for a moment before adding, “I think you might have selected an extremely interesting time to join the company.”

“So, tell me something about yourself,” he instructed me after a brief pause.

I started burbling again. I seemed to be doing that a lot when he was about. Something about him seemed to turn my brain off.

“Stop!” he instructed me after a short eternity during which I failed to string together a coherent sentence. “Remember the, ‘more thinking not less’ thing.” He smiled encouragingly. “I’ve seen your CV [resumé] and I know you’re not stupid so I want you to start by thinking about what sort of things a boss would want to know about a new employee. Now, take a deep breath and try to answer that question.”

I did as instructed. “He’d want to know about school, I suppose, and what I’m good at… hobbies, maybe.”

“That sounds like an excellent start,” he said. He waved his thanks to the waitress as our sandwiches arrived. I noticed that he made no move to start eating the one in front of him and his attention remained completely fixed on me. It was a compliment, I suppose, implying that I was about to say something worth listening to, even though it was distinctly unnerving.

So I told him about school and how I was good at English and IT. Then something about his burrowing eyes made me admit that I didn’t have many friends. Then I told him that I enjoyed reading and fencing.

“Fencing!” he observed. “That’s quite an unusual hobby.”

“Yes, my father is… was…” I froze then looked away as I started to cry.

“Look at me,” he said, taking my hand in his. The voice was gentle but it had an unmistakable air of authority about it and I had no choice but to comply. He handed me a large, white handkerchief.

“I’m sorry… I…”

“There is absolutely nothing for which you need to apologise!” he told me firmly. “I should have done more research before straying into sensitive areas. And for your future reference, ‘I would rather not talk about that,’ is a perfectly acceptable answer to that sort of personal question in the workplace. Do you understand?” He smiled at me and gave the hand he was holding a slight squeeze.

“Yes, sir. Thank you,” I sniffed.

“Now, would you like to tell me what that was all about?” The emphasis that he put on the word ‘like’ told me that it was unambiguously a question rather than an order.

I thought about it and gave a sigh. Why not. He was bound to find out sooner or later. “My parents were both killed in a car crash about two years ago,” I told him. One year, eleven months and twenty five days, to be precise but I didn’t tell him that. I knew that it probably wasn’t healthy for me to know it.

Surprisingly it hurt less than I expected it to. Maybe it was the fact that he was still holding my hand.

He was quiet for a moment then said, “I know it’s not the same but I had a baby sister, Jenny, who died... about five years ago now. She would have been eighteen this year.” The same age as me - he must have realised that.

We sat and looked at each other for a few seconds in silence and, surprisingly, it was not all that uncomfortable. “May I have my handkerchief back, please,” he asked at last.

I returned it and he wiped his eyes. “Should we eat?” he suggested, releasing my hand.

The sandwich was absolutely delicious and, as we ate, he described what the company did.

Then he told me off for not admitting that I didn’t understand what he was talking about and proceeded to give me a simpler explanation. Things about load balancing and routing algorithms.

Then, nervously, I admitted that I still didn’t completely understand what he was talking about.

“Good girl,” he said with an approving nod. “It’s not easy to admit you don’t understand something but always remember that if I’m talking and you’re not understanding, it’s a waste of everybody’s time. I might as well be talking to the wall. What’s more, if you don’t understand something I’m saying, it’s at least half way my fault. True?”

I forced myself to think before answering, “Yes, sir.”

He sat for a moment, sucking his lower lip and holding his head on one side, obviously deep in thought.

“Ultimately, what we do is make the internet work better. You can think of the internet as being like a huge, complicated motorway network. All the little cars are the lumps of data… one tenth of a second of that funny cat video you’re watching or the numbers describing your bank balance. OK?”

I nodded. That made sense.

“The main difference, as far as we’re concerned, is that, on the motorway, each driver decides where to go. On the internet, the decisions are made by a box at each junction. A car from London arrives at the Rugby junction and wants to go to Manchester. Send it up the M6. Another car, this time for Leeds. Send it up the M1. The box at the junction is called a router… makes sense?”

I nodded at that too.

Now, the clever bit of our software… our ‘value add’... is realising that, if the M6 is busy, then the router in Rugby can send some of the cars for Manchester up the M1 and they can then go across the M62. It’s much cheaper than building a bigger motorway… or stringing out more internet cable.

“So load balancing…” he looked at me, checking that I was understanding what he was saying, “and routing algorithms.”

I nodded enthusiastically.

“It’s been done for years, it’s just that we do it better,” he said then took another drink of tea.

“Your next challenge,” he said with a small laugh, “is explaining it all to my mother. You know that Janet, Ashley and I set up the company about five years ago, straight out of university.”

I nodded. Janet had told me that at the interview.

“She joined us about six months later and I’ve been trying to explain it ever since.” He smiled and took another sip of his tea before adding, “She still doesn’t have a clue what we do.”

I had to smile at that and we were both quiet for a while as we ate.

“So how are you getting on with my mother?” he asked when he had finished his sandwich.

“She’s lovely and really helpful,” I exclaimed. “It’s just… oh…” I suddenly realised that he had put me too much at my ease.

“Just say what you’re thinking!” he instructed me. “You will not be in trouble and nor will she.” Though his voice remained mild and calm I knew that I didn’t have any choice.

“Well… I really don’t know how to put this kindly… She doesn’t seem to know what she’s doing with the IT system.”

Tristram exploded at that and almost had Earl Grey tea spurting out of his nose. “You’re right!” he assured me when he had recovered enough to speak. “And you are correct; that was slightly too ‘open and direct’ for the workplace. The standard euphemism is that she would benefit from additional training but, in my mother’s case, we both know she wouldn’t really benefit from any amount of additional training. That’s why we chose your CV and why Janet grilled you so hard about IT at the interview.”

Again I nodded. That interview had been tough but really interesting - so interesting that somehow, after a couple of minutes, I forgot that I was supposed to be nervous. As it had gone on, it felt as if layer after layer of my knowledge was being peeled off like an onion and I came out of that meeting understanding several aspects of the subject better than when I went in. I didn’t think that was the point of job interviews but it seemed to satisfy Janet.

“So you see why we think that there is a Terrie shaped hole here with us?” Tristram asked.

“But wouldn’t you be better off with someone with more experience?” I asked without thinking, allowing the worries that had been bubbling under the surface since the job interview to slip out. I suddenly realised what I had said and began to burble incoherently once again.

“Shush!” Tristram said with a smile. “Do you really think I’m going to change my mind about employing you because you feel insecure?”

I was still having difficulty stringing more than two words together and again he interrupted me. “Let’s try again. An employer has decided to take on a new employee. In the first day on the job, the employee feels insecure. Do you think a sensible employer, who knows what he’s looking for, will change his mind because of that? Now take a second to think…” he paused and smiled, “then just answer that question.”

Something about his smile put me at my ease and I forced myself to think. “No, I don’t suppose he would,” I answered at last.

“We do things our own way,” he explained. “Anyone coming in from outside would have to unlearn most of what they already know. As I say, that hole is Terrie shaped.”

We sat in silence for a while as I finished my sandwich and he continued to drink his tea and at last my curiosity got the better of me. “What does Earl Grey tea taste like?” I asked. I’d heard of it but never tried it.

“I’m sure it tastes like nothing else you’ve ever tried,” he answered. “The box of tea bags in the cupboard back at work is mine. Make me a cup first thing tomorrow morning and you can help yourself,” he said, “ just a dash of milk for me, please!”

He finished off his strange smelling tea then asked, “Are you feeling a little more at ease now?”

“Yes, thank you,” I answered with a nod.

“And are you going to make it through the afternoon without throwing another tray of coffee cups at me.”

“I didn’t…” I began to splutter in outrage but laughed when I realised he was teasing.

At which point, I did what any sensible, mature new employee would do on the first day of a new job. I stuck my tongue out at my boss.

I only realised what I’d done when he started laughing.