Chapter 3
Monday morning, Emily officially started at StellarTech Group.
She'd chosen her outfit carefully—a sharp professional suit paired with flawless makeup—and she walked into the gleaming tech skyscraper with her chin held high. This building represented the pinnacle of the country's tech industry, and she was finally here.
The HR department assigned her to the Market Strategy division, where she joined three other interns. Each of them got paired with a different senior analyst to work as project assistants.
Emily's task was to collect and organize basic data on ten competitor companies for the "NextGen Retail Competitor Analysis" project that senior analyst Amanda Reed was leading.
It was a typical newbie assignment—tedious, heavy workload, but fundamental stuff that had to be done.
Emily agreed out loud, but inside, she was pissed.
She was a top graduate from Northbridge University, and she felt like she shouldn't be stuck doing grunt work that literally anyone could handle.
She glanced at the other interns around her, all of them from regular state schools, and they were all doing the exact same work she was.
She felt like her talents were being completely wasted.
Over the next week, Emily dragged herself through organizing the data with zero enthusiasm.
She figured the work required no real skill, so she did it half-heartedly. When she submitted her report to Amanda, it had several unit errors and missing data points.
Amanda sent the report back with just one ice-cold comment: [Before you do anything, learn to take it seriously first.]
Her comment lit a fire of rage inside Emily.
Emily felt like some regular employee had just humiliated her.
Right before she clocked out on Friday, Emily marched straight to the HR Director's office and knocked on his door.
Frank Lawson was a middle-aged man with a perpetual smile plastered on his face, and he looked up when she walked in.
Emily said, "Frank, I think my current position is seriously mismatched with my abilities and my value to this company."
Frank pushed his glasses up his nose and gestured for her to sit. "Oh? How so?"
Emily launched into her resume all over again, and her voice carried that barely-contained arrogance she couldn't quite hide. "I graduated from Northbridge University as an honors student, and I'm highly proficient in data analysis and market modeling.
"Having me do basic data collection is a massive waste of the company's talent resources. I'm more than capable of handling core responsibilities."
Frank listened patiently until she finished, and then he pulled out another document from his drawer and slid it across the desk. "This is the weekly intern evaluation your direct supervisor Amanda prepared for you."
Emily's eyes dropped to the page, and the comments practically burned into her retinas.
[Work Attitude: Arrogant, lacks team spirit. Work Capability: Weak fundamentals, multiple basic errors. Overall Rating: C.]
Emily's face went completely white. "This is fake. She hasn't even seen what I'm capable of."
The smile vanished from Frank's face when he heard that. He said, "Emily, your degree looks great on paper, but that only represents your past.
"Here, we evaluate you based on your current performance. If you can't even organize basic data properly, how can we possibly trust you with core projects worth hundreds of millions?
"As for the talent you keep talking about, come back and discuss it with me once you can deliver a data report that Amanda finds absolutely flawless.
"That's all I have to say. You can go now."
Emily walked out of the office like she'd been struck by lightning, her whole body ice cold.
*****
Up on the top floor executive suite, Frank stood respectfully in front of my desk. "Ms. Moore, here's Emily's weekly internship evaluation, along with the transcript of my conversation with her."
I took the file and flipped through it calmly. "She didn't suspect anything?"
"No," Frank replied. "I followed your instructions to the letter and treated her like any other intern. Everything was done by the book, standard company protocol."
"Good." I nodded, my eyes settling on the evaluation form.
I'd imagined her future so many times before.