Chapter 4
"This kind of student comes to make his resume look good. You had better be prepared for that," Amy had said.
I closed the files. Michael would be here tomorrow.
It was 9 AM on Wednesday. One after the other, two interns were led into the product department by the colleague from the HR department.
The first one was Kate. She had short hair and carried a canvas bag. With a smiling face, she greeted, "Ms. Gellar, I am Kate Brown."
"Have a seat," I said, pointing to the desk beside mine.
When the second intern arrived, I was reading the documents on the computer with my head down.
The noise caused by the leather shoes hitting the floor was louder than that caused by the trainers.
I raised my head and saw Michael.
He wore a gray suit and a white shirt. His hair was slicked back with gel, and he held a cup of coffee in his hand.
He was just as handsome as he had been three months ago.
He had the same look from three months ago when he judged others.
His eyes swept over the office, and his gaze lingered on my face for less than half a second.
There was no sign that he remembered or recognized me.
"Hello, I'm Michael Barnier." He then gave me a nod and a smile.
His smile was a standard one. It was polite, but not sincere.
"Take a seat," I said.
He pulled a chair and put his cup of coffee on the desk.
"Ms. Gellar, I would like to know our tasks for the first week," Kate said.
"Familiarize yourself with our products first. I will send you some documents, and you should finish reading them within three days. I will go over them with you on Friday," I explained.
Kate jotted that down in her notebook.
Michael played with his phone. I let it slide. It was his first day at work, after all.
"Michael," I called.
He raised his head. "Yes?"
"I've sent you the documents. At 3 PM this Friday, we'll go over them together," I said.
"Okay, got you." He nodded. "No problem, Ms. Gellar."
He looked at me, and the look in his eyes was distant and polite, as if I were a total stranger to him. He didn't recognize me at all.
Three months ago, he had sat across from me for 22 minutes. He had given me only one glance and then all his attention to his phone. Right in front of me, he had told his friend over the phone that I was plain and didn't look womanly at all.
Now, he was sitting just two meters away from me. Clearly, he had no memory of my face.
Obviously, he hadn't paid me any attention during the blind date.
*****
On Friday, Kate handed over a report which contained twelve pages and a comparison of our products and their competitors.
Michael submitted two pages. Half of one page was empty, and the other half was the introduction of the products from the official websites.
I wrote down my opinions, sent the report back to Michael, and told him to rewrite it.
"Ms. Gellar." He leaned back in the seat. "I am already familiar with our products. Is it necessary to put all my thoughts in a paper?"
"Yes," I responded. "Because I have the final say here."
He was taken aback. "Fine," he drawled unhappily. Then, he flashed a smile at me.
Amy happened to walk past us. She shot him one glance.
When he was out of earshot, she came back to me and whispered, "Who brought him here?"
"The HR department," I answered.
"Given his attitude." Amy shook her head. "It costs time to discipline him."
I shifted my gaze to Michael. I saw him order a cup of coffee the moment he was back to his desk.
He gave me a report before he clocked out that day.
The new version of his report contained three pages, one and a half pages more than the first one. One paragraph in it was copied from Wikipedia.
I highlighted the paragraph, sent the report back to Michael, and asked for another revision.
Michael finally lost his patience. "Ms. Gellar, is it necessary? The interns in other departments don't have to write so much."
"They are not my interns," I said.
He pursed his lips, turned around, and left.
Not far away, Kate kept writing without raising her head.
From the third week, Michael began to cause trouble.
On Monday, he was 20 minutes late to work and used the traffic jam as an excuse.
On Tuesday, he handed over an analysis of our competitors' products. Its format was confusing, and it didn't cite the sources of its data.
On Wednesday, he played with his phone in the back row during an interdepartmental meeting. When he was singled out by Robin Copperfield from the technical team, he failed to answer the questions about the details of the market demand.
I helped him out. After the meeting, he didn't thank me.
I kept a note of his performance. I didn't deliberately target him. I kept a note of all my interns' performance for the evaluation at the end of this month.
Till noon on Thursday, I finally realized that laziness was just one of his shortcomings.
*****
I went to the break room for some water. Near its doorway, I heard people chat inside.
Michael's voice sounded. "You know what, my last blind date was hilarious."
Then came another male voice. "Why?" It belonged to an intern in the operations team, and I couldn't recall his name.
"My aunt said that she had found me a good woman. Do you know what that woman looked like?" Michael said.