The next day, Bob kept refreshing the NobleStreet website, waiting for his masterpiece to be published. A voice at the back of his head kept nudging him to say that he should really focus about the next chapter, or perhaps even plot out more chapters, instead of manically refreshing a web page. But that little voice was small and squeaky. Another and much louder voice kept shouting that He had published a chapter! It was only a matter of hours before the world could read it! And he just knew that, as soon as it was available, readers would flock to it. At first, perhaps only twenty or thirty, but as people got back from school and work maybe hundreds would read his story. They would comment, and give him high ratings, and mark the story for Following. In his imagination, one of his new fans would share the link on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Tiktok… Bob didn’t really do social media himself, but judging by the amount of time Lucy kept her face buried in her phone he knew how something could go viral.
Sure, this was the first chapter of his first book. And of course he realised that he had far to go before he reached his potential. But even so, he had read thousands of books over three decades, and simply knew that his initial level was far and above that of the young whippersnappers. Bob laughed quietly to himself as he remembered opening a random story and finding it littered with incorrect spelling and grammar. If that story could get thousands of views and hundreds of followers, his story was going to the top and staying there.
Remembering a particularly brilliant passage from his book, where Josh had to dispose of Jake’s body by using washing-up liquid and a small pair of scissors, Bob chuckled as he entered the meeting room for the weekly team meeting. As his boss started droning on about the new OKRs and performance management schemes, Bob surreptitiously took his phone out of his pocket and hit the refresh button. His attention completely left the ongoing presentation when he saw the alert that had appeared: Your story has been approved. Click here to view.
Finally! Bob’s hands were trembling, as he pretended to follow the meeting while going to the Author Overview page and finding the Statistics screen. There it was.
Total Views 0 Average Views per Chapter 0 Wordcount 2311 Followers 0 Starred Favorite 0 To-Read-lists 0 Ratings 0 Rating Average - Reviews 0 Comments 0
Here we go! Bob looked up at the rest of the room with a grin plastered across his face. Gertrude from accounting was watching him with a sour expression, eyes peeking at him from above the glasses perpetually perched on the tip of her nose. She must have noticed his elation, and raised her left eyebrow inquiringly.
Bob felt… different. Not himself. And he winked back at Gertrude, who, taken completely by surprise, blushed and looked back down at her notes.
“Of course, OKR performance will directly affect your year end bonuses.” At the word bonuses, Bob’s attention snapped back to the presentation. “Performance will be evaluated four times through the year, and the average score will be used in the calculations. So you need to be on the ball every day - don’t think you can put in some extra effort in Q4 just to bump your scores!”
James looked uncomfortable as he said this last bit, looking down at his keyboard instead of at them. Bob didn’t really mind James. He was an ok boss, if only a bit naive at times. More than a decade younger than Bob, James was from a different generation. A generation that found it “difficult” to talk about things like performance reviews, and who looked for excuses to give them good reviews rather than point out where they needed to improve. Bob knew where he was good, and he knew what areas he didn’t really care about improving, but some of his team-members really needed some more guidance. At least James was better than Bob’s last boss, who had been from the older generation, where the word guidance meant to dock someone in pay or publicly ostracise them if they didn’t deliver.
“Any questions?” James looked around the room, and Bob groaned inwardly as Alex started speaking even before James had finished his sentence.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“But how is that fair?” Alex spoke in a thin and reedy voice, which always made Bob want to stuff something down his throat. Looking around the room for support, Alex continued, “What if we get sick? Or are busy at home? Like… I have to paint my parent’s garage this summer, and won’t be able to focus on my tasks. Are you just going to give me bad performance reviews if I miss a few deadlines? And then reduce my bonus?”
Alex apparently thought he had made a cogent and strong argument, as he again looked around the room for the support he obviously thought was warranted. Karen met Alex’ eyes and smiled at him. Encouraged, Alex continued, “obviously that is not fair. We’re all equally important, right, James?”
James looked lost, and Bob felt sorry for him. He considered jumping in to rescue James, but didn’t want to undercut his authority. The kid had to learn to deal with these situations. Instead, Bob looked at James and gave a small nod of support.
“Obviously, we are all equally important, Alex. And I understand that we need to balance work with our private lives. But at the same time, we need to remember that we are part of a company, and that company needs to deliver. If we fail to deliver, our customers will leave us, and that’s going to hurt us all.” James’ voice kept rising as he spoke, to stop the attempts Alex was making to interrupt him. At the end, he was almost shouting, and Bob winced. He could see James starting to perspire, as he looked down at his keyboard, as if for support. His fingers moved to the next slide, as he tried to regain control of the meeting as well as his emotions.
“This slide shows the equations that will be used to calculate…”
But James was now speaking quietly, and Alex spoke over him.
“What do you mean, hurt? Are you threatening to fire us if we don’t agree to this capitalist scheme of yours? The company is lucky that we want to work here. Don’t you know, companies across the country are losing employees because of behaviour like this!”
Alex crossed his arms over his chest. “I, for one, don’t agree with this approach. And that is that.”
The room went completely quiet. James just stared at Alex, at a loss for words. After a long moment, he said, slowly and in a voice obviously battered by emotion; “Alex, this is not something you agree or disagree with. This is the new policy set by HR”. Appealing to HR seemed to strengthen James, who continued in a firmer voice, “It’s not up to you. It is not even up to me. It is decided by HR!”
At this, Alex just threw his arms in the air. “Who do you think you are? Yeah, James, who do you think you are? To just present this as if it was decided. I don’t think I care to listen to this”. And at this, he got out of his chair. Looking around the room, he said, “Come on guys, let’s go and do some real work. Seems like Mr. Suit-and-tie here has forgotten how value is created in this place.”
Alex turned his back to them and marched towards the door. Karen began to rise out of her chair, but seeing that nobody else was moving she sat back down. Alex turned to find everyone still seated, looking at him. James was writing something in his notebook.
For a moment, something similar to uncertainty flickered across Alex’ expression, but it was quickly replaced by a haughty look as he said “Sheep!” and slammed the door behind him.
-
After lunch, Bob was answering his emails and considering whether to go over to James and give some support and… guidance, but instead he kept hitting the Refresh button to see his statistics.
Total Views 3 Average Views per Chapter 3 Wordcount 2311 Followers 0 Starred Favorite 0 To-Read-lists 0 Ratings 0 Rating Average - Reviews 0 Comments 0
That was really pitiful, and Bob was wondering if perhaps the statistics were broken. Maybe they only update every hour or something like that? Or maybe… maybe it had been the timing. Most people would be at work now, and not likely to be reading webnovels. That must be it. He needed to remember that for next time. Chapter 1 had been released at the mercy of the people doing the approval review, but now he knew to hold Chapter 2 for a time when people would not be at school or work.
Somewhat more happy now that he had a couple of good theories about why the story wasn’t already heading for the stars, Bob turned back to his emails. He sighed, seeing another message from HQ with some new policy they wanted him to implement. Eight years ago when he joined this position, he would have responded to the email with a curt message to say that they would consider the new policy, and gotten an equally curt response that he could consider it up his ass, as long as he implemented it without delay.
These days he was more mellow. Or, to be honest, he had stopped caring. He looked over the policy, noting that it wasn’t actually all that stupid. They would need to change how they built their database servers, make an amendment to the user authentication procedure and…
For a blissful hour, Bob lost himself in work.
Only interrupted by refreshing the NobleStreet stats every five minutes or so.