Willow raised a hand, silencing the pack. She looked at me with the same contempt she'd held for seven years.
I remembered our first meeting. She had held my resume like a dirty tissue, manicured nail tapping the paper.
"Alex Dickerson. Second-tier university. Not impressive." She'd tossed it onto the table. "Our standards are high. Since your education is lacking, you'll start at the bottom. Support work. Learn your place before you try to lead."
In the beginning, I really was just the office errand boy.
I fetched coffee, delivered documents, organized mountains of archived files, and even descaled the breakroom espresso machine.
But I refused to accept that as my ceiling.
While everyone else clocked out and headed to happy hour, I stayed behind. I dug through the company's internal server, studying successful project cases until my eyes burned. I memorized every process, dissected every analysis method, and internalized the phrasing of every winning report.
Whenever I caught a rare opening, I'd swallow my pride and approach a busy colleague.
"William, how do we usually export this data?"
"Madison, what's the standard protocol for handling this type of customer feedback?"
Most of the time, they didn't even look up. The responses were designed to make me go away.
"You don't need to worry about that."
"Too complicated. Even if I explained it, you wouldn't get it."
"Busy. Beat it."
But like a scavenger picking through scraps, I pieced the knowledge together, bit by bit.
The turning point came with Madison. She was rushing to submit a market research summary and had carelessly swapped the data sets of two key competitors. A fatal error.
I spotted it while organizing her materials. After a moment of hesitation, I spoke up.
"Madison, the data here—"
She snatched the document from my hand, face twisting. "Got it! God, you're nosy."
Later, that revised report passed inspection. At the weekly meeting, Willow publicly praised the thoroughness of the analysis.
Madison beamed, soaking up the applause without a single glance my way. She didn't mention my name. Not even a whisper.
From then on, the dynamic shifted.
"Helping out" stopped being an occasional favor and became my unofficial job description.