Page 12 of The Grump I Loathe
“Seriously though, why did you even come in if you’re still sick?” Max asked. “We can handle the interviews.”
I arched my brow. “Can you?”
Max crossed his arms. “You tell designers to go home if they have so much as a headache, and yet you’ve come in here with the plague.”
“I’mfine,” I insisted. I had no intention of letting go of the reins of this decision. Too much was riding on finding the right fit to not only make that holiday season release date but turn out a game that would live up to all the hype.
Wehadto get this one right. And just to make sure we didn’t repeat any of the mistakes from the past…I turned my attention back to my laptop, putting the finishing touches on LockMill’s new no-dating policy, then emailed it to Darius for review.
“What are you doing?” Max asked.
“Updating the workplace dating policy.” If Ali and I hadn’t been married, the company wouldn’t have had to go through hell while ourdivorce played out. And if Leigh, our lead developer, and Tristan, our former narrative designer, hadn’t split up, he wouldn’t have walked out on us, leaving us in the lurch.
Workplace relationships were a recipe for chaos, and I wasn’t about to let it happen again. Being CEO meant making sure my team had all the tools they needed to succeed. If that meant protecting them—and myself—from our own worst impulses, then that was what I’d do.
Max shook his head. “Of course you are.” He tossed a folder down in front of me. “Well, when you’re done with that, there are the files for the interviewees.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“And before you get your hopes up,” Max said. “No, Ryker Lowe isn’t on the list.”
“He turned us down?”
“Apparently, he never responded to the interview invitation.”
I nodded, my grumble turning into a cough as I poured myself a glass of water. If I hadn’t gotten sidelined with that damn space sheep woman, I might have managed to catch Ryker at the con. Yet another thing she’d screwed up for me.
The door to the conference room swung open. Darius walked in with a notebook—I’d wanted someone from HR at the interviews—along with Leigh, a tall, willowy woman with chestnut-brown hair, freckles, and thick rectangular glasses.
“You saw the new policy?” I asked Darius.
He nodded. “I’ll get it formatted and sent out by end of day.”
I caught Leigh’s eye, wondering if Darius had mentioned it to her. “It’s smart,” she said, revealing that he had. “Games and romance clearly don’t mix. I think we’ve both seen that firsthand.”
I wasstillseeing it because I was still dealing with the aftermath. Yeah, my divorce from Ali had been finalized, along with the division of our assets. She got the house and IP rights to some of our bestselling games, and I got Grace and the company. But it could never truly be over while Grace was still hurting from it.
The worst part, the part I’d hidden from Grace, was that Ali had rejected the offer of joint custody. It was only supposed to be until she could figure out what her new life looked like, but months had gone by, and there was no sign of the custody agreement changing. If Ali couldn’t figure out how to be with Sawyer and be a good mother to Grace, I’d never forgive her.
“You good?” Max asked, nudging me.
“What?”
“You squeeze that cup any harder and it’s going to shatter in your hand.”
I put my water glass down, did my best to push the Ali drama and Grace’s heartbroken face from my mind, and picked up the first interview file. “Fine,” I said. “Let’s get started.”
“So…” I sniffled and cleared my throat, still trying to sound professional eight—no, nine—interviews and many cough drops later. I didn’t even want to think about the total number of interviews we’d conducted in a little over a week, not to mention the dozens of applications we’d rejected before they even reached the interview stage.
That number compared to the number of candidates that actually seemed promising was starting to worry me. “Tell us about your experience with interactive narrative design.”
“Sure,” candidate number nine said. I blinked at her, already exhausted. “I mostly focus on reworking narrative structure. I think you can make a story more impactful when you scrap the whole framework and start fresh as often as you need to. I like to have max creative freedom to really find the story.”
My gaze cut across to Max and Leigh, and I gave a small shake of my head. This wasn’t going to work. Starting from scratch wasn’t an option when we were building off a hugely successful brand. This candidate clearly wasn’t prepared to adapt to the work we’d already put into the game.
Candidate one had been too inexperienced. Candidate two admitted they weren’t really a fan of sci-fi. And candidates three through eight…I rubbed my sinuses. A couple of them might be workable. If we could get past some proposed scheduling conflicts, I’d at least be open to having a follow-up conversation. But no one had convinced me they could match LockMill’s vision forShadow, or that they had anything dynamic to bring to the table. I wanted to be wowed. Instead, I was struggling not to yawn.
“Thank you so much for coming,” Leigh was saying, escorting the woman to the door. “We’ll be in touch.”
