Page 80 of A Fae in Finance
Neither of us had our videos on. I was sharing my screen, trying to keep up with the speed of his commentary.
“My saturation is perfect,” he scoffed. “I might as well have just given this to the new girl. I would have, if she wasn’t even more useless than you.”
Jeff was a man of many talents, one of them being motivational speaking.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, feeling lesssorryand moredeeply enraged. I stared out the window, at the sunless blue sky and the revel on the lawn below me. Doctor Kitten was enthralled, his tail twitching as he watched the figures below us dance. The window seemed to sense that I’d lost interest in my meeting, and suddenly music drifted up, where it hadn’t previously.
“Page eight,” Jeff said. I listened with half an ear to the sweep and swell of the song outside. It sounded like a strings rendition of a Backstreet Boys song. I clicked over to page eight. “Miri, you aren’t using any shortcuts.”
Levi cut in. “You don’t even have any shortcuts on the quick access toolbar. No wonder you’re so slow.”
I was certainly relieved to know that Levi had been paying attention.
“Change the header,” Jeff said. “This isn’t a marketing pitch; we don’t need to say anything nice about the company or the client.”
I had been under the impression that it was a marketing pitch, and in fact that we probably should be saying nice things about the company and client to our potential investors.
“Okay,” I said, selecting the header and deleting it.
“No, why did you do that?” Jeff snapped. “Undo. I still want to look at it for reference.”
I hit CTRL+Z, my eyes drifting back over to the window. Why did any of the faeries want to leave what was essentially a paradise for them? Was the sun really worth that much?
“Those boxes aren’t left-aligned,” Jeff said. I selected the relevant boxes and hit ALT+H+G+A+L. The boxes were, in fact, left-aligned.
“Well, they look weird,” he amended.
“I think it’s the drop shadow,” I said.
“We always use drop shadows.” Jeff sounded irate. “They don’t usually look weird. You did something to them.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, instead of arguing. Maybe I had done something to them. God knew I didn’t have immense levels of expertise in the specifics of drop shadows on a PowerPoint presentation.
I double-checked, but the shadows were lower-right, as always.
We’d made it through most of the deck when Jeff started commentating again. “Miri, this shouldn’t have taken this long to review,” he started.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Is this a broader pattern?”
I gritted my teeth. “What do you mean?”
“It feels like things always take longer with you, Miri.”
My eyes flicked over to my second screen, where Levi’s initials indicated he was still online.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You need to do better work and do it faster.”
“I’m sorry.”
Jeff sighed. “Just do better. Don’t apologize.”
“Okay.”
“Clean this up, PDF it, and send it to the client.”
