He Called Me a Fool for Working Hard, Then Cried When the Fool Left Chapter 01

He Called Me a Fool for Working Hard, Then Cried When the Fool Left Chapter 01

Just because I put “coding” under special skills on my resume, I got loaned to Engineering the day I started.

Over a month of hell. I was working late every single day, sometimes until two in the morning.

Finally, I helped them get the project over the finish line.

The boss was thrilled. He announced a two-million-dollar bonus.

Marcus Harlow, the engineering manager who did absolutely nothing, took the biggest cut.

The engineers under him got at least fifty grand each.

Everyone except me.

I returned to my department empty-handed.

It didn’t sit right with me. I went to find Manager Harlow to ask why.

That’s when I overheard him talking to his guys.

“Marcus, Elizabeth helped us out that much and didn’t get a cent of the bonus. Aren’t you worried she might have a problem with that?”

Marcus snorted.

“A problem? What’s she gonna do about it?”

“Besides, she’s in Finance. Not my people.”

“That’s just how it goes. The capable ones end up doing more. Not my fault she was dumb enough to say yes after a few nice words.”

***

I stood outside the door. Their laughter drifted through the door, each chuckle cutting into me.

One of the engineers warned him, “Marcus, you might not want to say that stuff too loud.”

“So what if she hears?” Marcus’s voice was light, careless. “A kid fresh out of college. What’s she gonna do?”

“You think she’d try anything with me?”

I took a breath and walked away.

On my way past Engineering’s main bullpen, I saw a few engineers gathered around a desk through the glass door.

The bonus envelopes were sitting on the table. Each envelope looked fat.

One of them noticed me walking by. His eyes flicked away, and he looked down without saying a word.

I didn’t stop. Just kept walking.

Back in Finance, my desk was in the corner.

Two tables pushed together, stacked with file boxes and a printer nobody else wanted.

I’d been loaned out the day I started, so the desk wasn’t even mine. Denise Huyler, the woman next to me, had cleared it off last minute.

Denise walked over with her coffee cup and gave me a once over. “Elizabeth, you look terrible.”

“I’m fine, Denise.”

I sat down and turned on my computer.

“I heard Engineering got their bonuses,” Denise said, lowering her voice. “Two million dollars!”

“How much did you get?”

I shook my head. “Nothing.”

Denise didn’t ask anything else. She walked away with her coffee.

She’d been here forever and had seen this kind of thing too many times.

I stared at my screen. Marcus’s words kept looping in my head.

“What’s she gonna do about it?”

“Not my people.”

“Dumb enough to say yes after a few nice words.”

I thought back to my first day. I had just gotten to the Finance department when my phone rang.

“Elizabeth Vance? This is Marcus Harlow, Engineering manager. Come up to the third floor.”

I hesitated. “Manager Harlow, I haven’t even—”

“I know. I already talked to your director, Richard Hale.”

“Just get up here. The project is in a bad spot.”

I didn’t think twice. I put my bag down and went.

When I walked into Engineering, the smell of stale coffee and instant ramen hung in the air.

Papers and blueprints were spread across every desk. A few guys were gathered around, all of them with dark circles under their eyes.

Marcus sat in the corner office at the back. Glass walls. He saw me and waved me in.

I walked inside. He was leaned back in his chair with his feet up, a cup of black coffee steaming on his desk.

“Elizabeth Vance, right? I saw on your resume you know how to code. Won some awards in college?”

I answered honestly. “Yeah. State competition, second place. I taught myself. It’s more of a hobby, really.”

“That’ll do.” He pointed toward the bullpen. “This project is worth ten million. The client’s breathing down our necks. We’ve been here a week straight and we’re still stuck.”

“Think you can help?”

I glanced at the engineers outside. They looked wrecked. “Where exactly are you stuck?”

Marcus got up, walked to the door, and called out, “Craig. Explain the problem to Elizabeth.”

Craig Morrison was in his early thirties. Stubble. Dark circles.

He looked me up and down and handed over the specs, his tone already annoyed. “You really know how to code?”

“This project runs on a pretty advanced automated control system. You sure you can handle it?”

I skimmed the document for a few minutes. The more I read, the more wrong it looked.

“Craig, the control logic here is broken.” I pointed to one of the modules. “The feedback loop is configured wrong. It’s not a coding issue. The algorithm framework itself is flawed.”

Craig frowned. “No way. We followed the standard template.”

“Look at this.”

I took his pen and drew a few lines on the blueprint.

“The feedback signal should follow this path. You have it set up as parallel, but it should actually be serial with a bypass.”

“If you write the code this way, it’ll stall at the third step every time. The signal never makes it back.”

Craig froze. He stared at the lines I’d drawn for a long minute. His face changed.

“Holy shit… you’re right.”