I just said it was nothing.
Deep down, I knew they hadn't been trying to make things difficult for me on purpose.
They were simply used to coasting.
The project was worth a hundred million dollars. Company policy tied bonuses directly to the project's value.
For them, as long as the project got delivered, the money was theirs.
Who actually did the work? Irrelevant.
During that month and change, Manager Lambert treated me unreasonably well.
Every morning he'd greet me with a smile, ask if I'd eaten breakfast.
When I stayed late, he'd have Finn order takeout for me.
Once I was running a hundred-and-one-degree fever and still fixing code. When he found out, he sent his assistant over with a box of medicine.
"Susannah, take care of yourself. No project is more important than your health."
At the time, I actually thought he was a decent person.
Looking back now, those words were nothing more than insurance against me walking off the job.
The day the project wrapped, the client signed off on the final review in one pass.
Lambert cracked open a bottle of wine in his office and had everyone raise a glass.
He walked over to me holding his glass, all smiles. "Susannah, you're the real MVP of this project. Paul Lambert does not forget."
I was naive enough to believe that if I just did good work, people would treat me fairly.
Naive enough to believe all those smiles and kind words were sincere.
Naive enough to believe the world actually ran on "hard work gets rewarded."
Now I understood. I'd been nothing but a tool.
I didn't cry. I didn't make a scene.
I didn't go to Director Finch to pour my heart out, and I didn't file a complaint with HR.
Because none of that would have changed a thing.
Report a department manager?
I'd been at the company barely over a month. What leverage did I have?
I made myself one promise, silently.
Starting today, I would never be fooled again.
After I went back to the Finance Department, life got quiet.
Nobody came looking for me, and nobody assigned me any work.
My desk was tucked in a corner where people rarely passed.
Once in a while a colleague would come by to use the printer, grab their pages, and leave without so much as a glance in my direction.
Director Finch didn't call me in for a talk either.
I figured he already knew what had happened over in Engineering. He just didn't want to get involved.
After all, I was nobody. Just the lowest person on the ladder.
The work in Finance wasn't complicated.
Mostly auditing expense reports, organizing vouchers, helping pull together financial statements.
I spent three days clearing the entire two-month backlog of receipts, then re-sorted the previous year's vouchers chronologically from scratch.
Marilyn, at the desk next to mine, watched me hustling back and forth and finally said, "Susannah, slow down. The work's not going anywhere."
I smiled and kept going.
Slow down for what?
If I slowed down, my mind would circle back to all of it. Better to stay busy.
But I wasn't the one looking for trouble. Trouble came and found me.
One day at lunch I went to the cafeteria.
I'd just sat down when two women from Marketing took the seats across from me.
They didn't know who I was. They ate and talked.
"Did you hear? The Engineering project bonus was two million. Lambert pocketed several hundred thousand all by himself."
"Yeah, and the people under him got a nice cut too. Even the intern who just started walked away with fifty grand."
"Apparently the project was stuck from the start. Then some woman from Finance went over and cracked the whole thing."
"No way. Finance? A woman who knows how to code?"
"Who knows if it's even true. Probably just dumb luck. Right place, right time."
"So how much did she get?"
"Not a cent. Worked for free like an idiot."
They both laughed.
I kept my head down and kept eating.
I heard similar things a few more times after that.
