You Fired a Tech Genius novel · Chapter 11 of 32

Chapter 11: The Aisle

I stood up.

Nine hundred heads turned to the last row, and I felt every one of them.

Bridger grabbed my sleeve.

"Don't," he whispered. "It's a trap."

"I know."

"Then why..."

"Because the grocer asked me a question," I said.

I walked down the center aisle in my hoodie and my blazer, past people I had spent years on the phone with and never met.

A woman in the fourth row put her hand on my arm as I passed.

"Tell them, honey," she said.

At the front, the grocer in the green apron stepped aside from the microphone and held it for me.

"Security," Braxton said into his headset, too loud.

Two men in black polos started down the side of the hall.

Somebody in the middle of the room shouted, "Let him talk!"

Then somebody else.

Then half the hall, a rumble of folding chairs and voices, and the men in black polos slowed down and looked at one another.

Braxton stood in the spotlight with his mouth open.

"I'm not here to fight anyone," I said into the microphone. "I'll be quick."

I looked at the stage.

A flip chart stood in the corner with a marker hanging from a string.

"May I borrow that?"

Nobody stopped me.

I walked up the side steps, uncapped the marker, and turned over a clean page.

"Everybody take out your phone," I said. "Look at the clock on the wall."

A huge wall clock hung over the doors, a plain white face with red hands.

"On the first, you pull payroll between six and six-fifteen," I said. "All at once. Thousands of you."

I drew a single door.

Then I drew a thousand little people pushing at it.

"The old system had a man at the door checking each of you at midnight," I said.

"He was slow. He was boring. He never missed anyone."

I drew a stick figure with a clipboard and put an X through him.

"Ledgerline 5 fired him."

A few people laughed uneasily.

"Now at six-oh-five nobody's checking," I said.

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