Worst Case Scenario

      You didn’t argue with Christopher Thustle. That was the number one rule of boardroom meetings. The only permitted words were yes, of course, and certainly. Or, preferably, you didn’t speak at all. In the nine months I had worked as social media intern at Thustle Events Inc., I had never spoken one word in a single meeting. Usually orders were just thrown at me and I was too busy struggling to write them down and nod enthusiastically to contend with the English language.

           It was rare that Chris – he insisted, not Mr Thustle, or even Christopher – had much to say to me in a meeting anyway. Other than the usual ‘keep our engagement up and post lots of pictures of the latest event’, I was only there to listen. Until the last week of March.

           Chris was buzzing with excitement as he stood at the head of the boardroom table, shoulders set back and hands clasped in front of him in a way that betrayed how smug he felt. It was the kind of stance he took when pitching his latest initiative. It would have been annoying, but the company was one of the fastest growing in the state so it wasn’t like his bravado was entirely unfounded.

           “Gentlemen,” he greeted everyone grandly, spreading open his arms to gesture to us all. “And lady,” he added, nodding to me as an afterthought. I was the only woman in the room. “Next week is April Fool’s Day. A trivial day, certainly, but one I think we need to capitalise on. Brands have tried things in the past, but they’ve all been too small scale. We want to think big.” Chris stopped to smirk. “At least in a manner of speaking.”

           He brought up an image on the screen that covered most of the back wall. A small building, maybe ten foot square, built out of cinder blocks and painted black, graced the room. Another click of a remote and it was replaced by the interior of the same space, also painted black and bare save for a padlocked silver box in the centre. At least three chains were wrapped around it, one of them securing it to a metal loop embedded in the concrete floor.

           “This box,” Chris announced, his voice booming around the room, “contains exclusive passes to every event we hold for the next twelve months. From award ceremony afterparties to courtside NBL tickets. All in all, it’s worth upwards of half a million dollars. On April Fool’s Day, we’re going to post the coordinates of this building to every social media channel we have. I want hashtags. I want this to go viral. I want everyone in the city to be heading for this box.”

           No one dared to speak but I stole a look around the room to see if anyone was as confused as I was. This was a terrible idea – there was only one way in or out of that tiny room and any message I pushed on social media would reach upwards of six million people, most of them in the city. There was no way to make the space safe. People would be crushed.

           “Now, I know what you’re thinking,” Chris continued, and I hoped he would answer my concerns. “How is this an April Fool’s Event? It’s just a regular social media stunt, right? Wrong! There is no voucher inside that box. It is, in fact, empty. We don’t have to give away anything expensive, and yet we still go viral for the day.”

           That didn’t solve the problem at all, it only made things worse. Chris was looking so proud of himself, basking in the approval of his employees. It was imaginary on his behalf. Now when I looked around the room, I saw my concern was mirrored in the faces of several others around the table. I waited for someone to say something, but negativity wasn’t permitted in meetings. It was yes, or nothing.

           I saw Chris wrap up his ego-stroking session and reach for his notes, and I knew that neither yes nor nothing was an option.

           “Sir, with all due respect, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

           Everyone turned to look at me, eyes wide with disbelief. Had I been feeling anything other than a bubbling panic in my stomach, I would have glared back at them for not voicing their own apprehensions. As it was, it was all I could manage not to shrink back into my chair as Chris fixed me with a stony glare.

           “You’re not paid to have ideas. You’re paid to execute them,” he said, each word forced through his teeth.

           I could tell I wasn’t going to get any support from any of my co-workers – they all looked too glad it wasn’t them facing Chris’ wrath. It wasn’t a battle I was going to be able to fight alone so I deferred to the regular protocol and ducked my head, nodding. Maybe there was some way to phrase the social media posts so people knew to be careful, and at least expected the prize might be too good to be true.

           The rest of the meeting passed by in a blur as I tried to brainstorm potential solutions to this problem that wouldn’t get people hurt but also wouldn’t get me fired. I had rent to pay and it had been hard enough to find one social media job – even if it did pay a pittance. If I ruined Chris’ stunt and had to leave Thustle Events, I wasn’t going to be getting a good reference to start up anywhere else.

           Chris kept the image of the inside of the box in the little black house up on the screen for the rest of the meeting and I tried my best not to imagine how few people it would take piling in, in search of the prize of a lifetime, before someone wouldn’t make it out.

           The image didn’t leave my mind even as I sat at my desk afterwards, still staring at the picture. Chris had emailed it over straight away, with a request for me to draft some posts for his approval. There was a list of acceptable hashtags - #AprilFoolsDay wasn’t one of them. I couldn’t even hint that things might not be what they seemed. I had an empty page up, the cursor mocking me as it blinked, when Chris strode up next to me, perching on the end of my desk and narrowly missing upsetting my coffee mug.

           “I know you had some reservations about the April Fool’s Day campaign earlier, so I wanted to give you a chance to air them,” he said in lieu of any greeting. It was possible he didn’t know my name to greet me in the first place.

           Gone was the anger from the office and instead Chris had adopted the air of a concerned and empathetic boss, ready to lend an ear. I’d seen it around the office enough to know it was all a charade. He would listen to someone – or at least pretend to listen – for a maximum of five minutes, then he would conclude the little meeting with a clap on the shoulder and a cheerful “Good talk!” and that would be the end of that.

           I knew I only had one chance to stop this before it went badly wrong. Shoving my nerves as far down inside me as I could, I held my head high and attempted to look authoritative.

           “Best case scenario: people are angry,” I said, trying to reason.

           Christian seemed to be barely restraining from rolling his eyes, as he tapped his foot and didn’t even do me the courtesy of looking at me.

           “Worst case scenario?” he asked, trying to force as much huffing into the words as possible so I knew he was bored.

           “People die. There’s a stampede into that building, people can’t make it out, and they get crushed.”

           I had hoped it would be the moment I finally got through to him. I watched as he snapped out of his little scene of boredom and seemed to be actually processing my concern. Something was ticking through his brain, numbers flying past behind his eyes. He was realising we couldn’t do this, it was too dangerous. He was going to cancel the stunt. He was-

           “How many people?”

           He asked the question like he wanted a genuine answer, a number that he could plug into an equation to weigh up a risk/reward scenario. Try as I might, I couldn’t keep the horror from my eyes. My mouth hung open; I couldn’t even muster together enough scraps of coherent thoughts to stumble over a protest. I was just silent.

           “I knew you’d come around.” Chris grinned. “I can’t wait to see the posts you come up with. Have them on my desk by the end of the day for approval.”

           He pushed himself off from my desk, planting his hand on my shoulder. Rather than a cheerful pat, he gripped it tightly, his fingers squeezing so hard it felt like they were going to burst through my skin and dig under my bones.

           “I’m trusting you with this.”

           With that, he walked away.

           I turned back to my screen, bringing up that image of the inside of a tiny room where all hell was sure to break loose if I summoned the entirety of the city to it, all of them in search of a prize beyond compare.

           I wasn’t paid to have ideas, I was paid to execute them. But this time I might be executing more than ideas.