Welcome to your new job!

Liam put on his best false smile as he pushed open the door in­to his new workplace. The receptionist politely smiled as he made a beeline towards the shiny elevator. Two others entered in behind him. He pressed 15 and waited for the doors to close.

One of them, a man with a trimmed beard and rimless glasses, looked at both of them quizzically.

“I haven’t seen either of you here before. New to LoopyTech?” The other person, a relatively tall woman, nodded.

“Yep, this is my first day on the job. I’m a sensors engineer. Oh, and my name is Reyann.” They both looked at Liam expectantly.

“Similar story here. I’m Liam, and it’s my first day too; I’m a front-end developer.”

“Welcome. You both are gonna love working here. I’m Pete.” He shook their hands in turn.

On floor 15, they were greeted by a reasonably large room lined with desks, people, and laptops. Reyann looked around in confusion. “Where're the cubicles?”

Pete laughed. “Yeah, we don’t do those here. It’s easier to collaborate when everyone’s together at desks, and you’ll be less isolated in general. It’s not for everyone, I guess, but that’s how LoopyTech does it. You probably oughta talk to the manager over in her office.”Liam and Reyann thanked Pete and made their way to the manager’s office. It took her an awkwardly long time to look up from the computer.

“Oh, you two must be the new recruits! Welcome aboard. You should sit with your respective teams, though technically we don’t really care where as long as you’re collaborating and getting your work done. We’re glad to have you here, now get started!”

Liam and Reyann went to their respective tables. The front-end developers were fortunate enough to be working in the corner, getting windows on two sides. He picked a seat and cleared his throat.

“Hey, I’m the new guy.” The rest of the table analyzed him for a few moments when the team’s scrawny-looking African-American leader finally responded.

“Welcome. Why don’t you tell us a little about yourself, and then I’ll catch you up to speed on what we’re doing.”

“Okay. I grew up in Maryland - “

“I’m gonna stop you right there. We don’t care about your childhood, tell us who you are today.” That was kind of brusque. Who made him leader?

“Oh, uh… okay. I just graduated from the University of Maryland, with a major in comp sci, of course.” His new colleagues looked at each other as if remembering an inside joke. “I’ve interned at other tech companies before, too.” The atmosphere amongst the others still hadn’t changed. “And, uh, I‘m teaching myself how to play the guitar.” He was cut off there.

“All wonderful things! (he was probably lying through his teeth) Now, I see you’ve picked a seat; you can sit there, and I’ll explain what we’re doing so you can get started.” The leader spent the next 20 minutes explaining the project, timelines, required features, etc. It was a pretty daunting task, but this was supposedly a good team, full of people with degrees from some of the best schools in the country – except Liam. “So yeah, that’s pretty much what we’re doing here, and yeah, you can get started now.”

Having been given an assignment and context, it was time to start working. He noticed that his portion was a very simple part. When he asked about another feature that no one was working on, the response was, “Trust me, the part I gave you is crucial for now. We’ll deal with that fuzzy search thing later; I’ll probably have a couple of the more experienced guys working on it, maybe. We’ll see.” Liam didn’t press the issue farther. The leader wasn’t even trying to hide his lack of trust. But, at least he had something to do, so he started doing what he knew best. It probably wouldn’t take too long to implement the feature he was given, maybe two days at the most. Most of the low-level functions required by his work were already done, so he wouldn’t have to deal with that.

It was only about an hour of working when he noticed the man sitting next to him kept glancing at his code and almost imperceptibly shaking his head.

“Excuse me, am I doing something wrong?” The other man looked delighted to have the chance to explain everything Liam was doing wrong in his slightly nasally voice.

“N-not technically wrong; it’s more like, ‘why would you do it that way?’” He adjusted his glasses. He went on to explain 6 different rearrangements and changes to make to Liam’s code.

“That last one is key. It’s a, uh, little trick I learned from my professor at Cornell. Trust me; it works really well.”

Liam thanked him before noticing that most of the changes were entirely stylistic. Okay, maybe one or two of the changes were marginally more efficient, but the rest of it offered little advantage. He chose to keep the changes to not harm the poor man’s ego. After some time, he noticed people leaving for lunch. Apparently, you could eat whenever you needed to. Nobody cared how employees organized their time as long as they finished their work by the time it was required of them. Liam decided he’d go at around 1:30 PM, for no reason other than it being a habit. He made decent progress -despite the looks from the Cornell colleague - and headed out to a nearby fast-food restaurant at 1:30.

He picked out a sandwich – something he could eat reasonably quickly – and then noticed a familiar face sitting alone at a table.

“Oh, I saw you in the elevator this morning.” He took a second to remember her name. “Reyann, right?” She nodded back. “Can I sit here?” Sure, they didn’t really know each other, but they at least had one thing in common and he wouldn’t mind having someone to talk to for about twenty minutes.

“So, uh… how is your first day going?”

Reyann grimaced. “Um, so… I didn’t really go to a very prestigious school.” Liam’s head perked up at this.

“I didn’t either! And my team is not fond of that,” he interrupted.

“Oh? I was about to say, my team is the same way. You think it’s just because of our schools or because we’re new?”

“I’m thinking it’s the school, maybe a mix of both. I got some strange looks when I mentioned the University of Maryland. Plus, the guy who sits next to me was Reyanninitely looking to tell me he went to Cornell.”

“Cornell, wow. He doesn’t need to show that off, though.” Her tone became a little more aggressive, Liam noticed. “We went through the same interviews he did and even though we didn’t go to an Ivy League or whatever, we still earned our degrees just the same as everyone else.” Liam found himself drawn to her newfound outrage. “I am being completely neglected on my team, too, and it’s unacceptable.”

“Yeah, exactly. So, what should we do about it?”

Reyann took a second to finish chewing. “Mmph – sorry – We should go to HR or the manager, obviously. We can’t be treated as inferior because of where we went to school.”

Liam nodded. “Yep, that sounds good. Let’s go after lunch.” The conversation died out as they both looked down at their food.

After some silence, Reyann asked, “So, how’d you decide to work at LoopyTech?”

“I’ve wanted to be a programmer since I was a teenager. I love the tech that LoopyTech comes out with and I thought it would be great to be a part of that. I don’t know if I’d call this my dream job, but I do love this work.”

“Interesting. My best friend’s dad was an engineer doing some of the same work I got hired to do here. He showed us some of his work and I was fascinated by it. That’s pretty much my entire inspiration for working here. I felt like I actually achieved a dream when they hired me here. It’s a shame the other employees are ruining it for me.”

“Yeah, we’d both love it here if it weren’t for them.” They continued to discuss their pasts, which weren’t too different. They loved technology and spent 4 years in their universities learning about it. Once they finished eating, they headed back into the building so they could speak with their manager, who they had met earlier.

Reyann tentatively knocked on the manager’s office. She and Liam were left staring at the walls and the floor when the manager finally looked up.

“Ah, how can I help you?” She must’ve thought they wouldn’t notice, but she was clearly tapping her foot rather quickly on the floor. Reyann suddenly felt a little petty, like she the manager was doing something important and they brought in a silly complaint.

“Um, Liam and I are getting kind of sidelined and even a little disrespected because they all graduated from expensive schools and we didn’t.” The manager looked at both of them solemnly. Then she mock-grinned at them.

“What did you guys expect me to do? Talk to them about it? Tell their parents? We hired you because we think you’re capable of the jobs we give to you. Prove it. See, they’re not harassing you or anything, are they?” They both stood silently. “Yup, I didn’t think so. You’re basically just complaining that they don’t like you! I’m not magic and I can’t do anything to make them like you. Sorry.” She didn’t look very sorry.

“Thank you for the advice,” Liam said stiffly, and then walked out of her office. Baffled, Reyann caught up to him and asked, “What are you doing?”

Liam shook his head. “If I had to listen to her any longer, I would’ve slapped her.”

“Wow, okay. I get it though. She was of no help whatsoever. Anyway, we both probably have work to do. Catch you later.”

“It took you that long to eat lunch? I would’ve thought you were on a date or something! You need to be more efficient with your time, and probably learn some time-management skills.” Reyann’s team leader was not as lenient as Liam’s.

“Um, sorry. Won’t happen again.”

“Whatever. You have work to do, please finish it on time.” The others on the team suddenly were hyper-focused on their screens. She did as she was told.

After some amount of work, she noticed a conversation in somewhat hushed tones between someone working on a related component and an intern.

“Would you mind checking in on Reyann? I am a little worried her work won’t be up to snuff, as they say.”

“Why would it not be? She did get hired here, after all.”

“Yes, I know that. But, just in case. One can never be too careful.” Reyann pretended not to have heard any of that as the intern semi-discreetly made her way over to Reyann. She just kept working, ignoring the scrutinizing stare from the intern. A few demoralizing minutes later, she heard the footsteps heading back to the other side of the table.

“So, what did you see?”

“I didn’t anything remarkably wrong with her work. She mostly seemed to know what she was doing.”

“Huh, okay. Thank you.” Reyann pretended not to notice the more surprised than relieved face on the team leader. She just didn’t know what to do, other than a small outburst that would certainly get her fired. There was simply no solution. She hopelessly finished her work for the day, hoping the next would be better.

It wasn’t. The next day was not much different from the first. An idea began to take root in her mind. It could have been relevant to Liam, as well.

She caught him at the same restaurant as before. Apparently, he loved their sandwiches.

“Did they get any better, or what?” Reyann already knew the answer but asked anyway.

“I wish. No, they’re the same as they were yesterday. I’m thinking I should give it a couple of weeks.”

“Huh. You have a lot of tolerance. I don’t want to wait that long. I’m thinking of quitting.” Liam set his sandwich down.

“W-what?” Reyann looked dead serious.

“You heard me. I want to quit. I’ll find work at another company. I can’t take it here.”

“I haven’t seen your work, so I’m not going to tell you it’s great or anything. But I do know this: it’s not that easy to get into LoopyTech. You did. You’d want to throw that away? I know this is cliché, but what would your friend’s dad think?”

Reyann chuckled. “Yeah, when you put it that way, it sounds pretty bad.”

“If they won’t give us their respect, we have to take it from them, you understand? I’m not siding with the manager, but she basically gave us the only solution we can expect from anyone. We just gotta work hard.”

Reyann smiled. “I thought we’d end this talk with both of us deciding to leave, but you’ve gone and convinced me to stay. Let’s see what happens.”

“Yep. We’re going to welcome ourselves into this company, whether they like it or not.”