Another day at work

After an uneventful ride on the subway, you find yourself back at a familiar sky-scraping tower. SlidingTech, Inc. You enter the building, waving your badge at the guard, and head up the elevator to your floor. Minutes later, you are sitting at your desk, your laptop booting up in front of you, overlooking the city. The smell of coffee sits lazily in the air, wafting away from a hundred engineers' morning brews. As you prepare for the day, you open your email and check if anything happened the night before. You see an email from Alex and open it.

Hey Lev, come by my office in the morning. I'd like to get started as soon as possible.

Well, looks like you will be skipping lunch today. You head over to Alex's office, knocking on the man's door and coming inside.

"Lev, good to see you!" he exclaims, way too excited for a Thursday morning.

"Hey, Alex. What can I do to help?"

"I have a list of candidates here, people you know in our org, and I'd like your help going through them. What do you say?"

You sit down across from Alex, eyeing a large stack of papers on his desk.

"I'd love to, of course," you answer.

"Great! Let's get started."

Alex hands you half a stack, about six inches thick.

"Go through each of these resumes an annotate your thoughts about them. Ask yourself - would this person be a good boss? Will they fit within our leadership group? Are they hard workers? That kind of thing. You know the drill."

You nod and get to work, as Alex works the other half of the stack. You sift through each resume, writing notes about each. Too many job switches. Too little experience. Too arrogant. Too confrontational. Not confrontational enough. Soon, every stapled cluster of papers is decorated with the red ink of your pen. You set the completed stack back on Alex's desk and see that he is also finishing his.

"So, what do you think?" he asks, as he finishes jotting notes on the last few papers.

"None of them are qualified, for a lot of different reasons. If you pick any of them, they'll run our group into the ground, one way or another."

He nods sagely, as if he already expected the answer.

"Fair enough. Let's switch. I'll look over your notes as I go through them."

He pushes his stack to you, and you push yours to his. The process begins again, and you find yourself mostly in agreement with what Alex wrote in the margins. Again, too little experience, too arrogant, too flaky, and a variety of other issues.

"So, here's the deal. I have to pick someone from our organization to fill my spot. So despite the issues we found with these candidates, I have to pick one. What do you think?"

You inwardly roll your eyes. Of course, more politics. Then, a thought strikes you. You have the Affection Multiplier app! You can make your own rules now, not follow his.

"When do you have to pick?"

"I have two weeks. That leaves me one week to transition them into the role."

"Why don't you wait to pick, then? There's no rush in doing it now."

You need time. More time.

"Sure, that wouldn't hurt. Maybe we can come to a decision after we slip on it for a bit."

"Good idea."

A grin spreads across your face. After two weeks and the help of the app, you will be the new Director. You'll make sure of it.