A new hire kept asking for help while I had deadlines. I told him, “Figure it out yourself.” It sounds harsh now, looking back from a place of more wisdom, but at the time, I was drowning. We were working in a fast-paced architectural firm in Chicago, and I had three major blueprints due by the end of the week.
Every time I got into a flow state, I’d feel a tap on my shoulder or see a shadow over my desk. It was Silas. He was young, maybe twenty-three, fresh out of university and looking like he’d never seen a professional drafting software in his life.
He had this habit of asking questions that I felt he should have known the answers to already. “How do I scale this layer?” or “Where is the archive for the Smith project?” Each question felt like a mosquito buzz in my ear while I was trying to perform surgery. Finally, I snapped.
I didn’t yell, but my voice was cold and sharp as a razor. I told him that I wasn’t his professor and that my time was far more expensive than his. I told him that if he wanted to make it in this industry, he needed to stop being a parasite on other people’s productivity.
He just stood there for a second, blinking, and then he replied, “OK.”
He didn’t complain, didn’t go to HR, and didn’t even look hurt. He just went back to his desk and started typing. For the next few months, he never asked me another question.
I felt a pang of guilt occasionally, but mostly I just felt relieved that I could finally get my work done in peace. I watched from a distance as he stayed late, often being the last one to leave the office, hunched over his monitor with a notebook by his side. Two years later, the world looked a lot different.
Our firm went through a massive restructuring after a merger, and several senior partners took early retirement. I had stayed in my lane, doing good work but never really pushing for leadership roles. Silas, however, had become a rising star, moving from our department to the strategic planning side of the business.
I hadn’t spoken to him in over a year, figuring he had moved on to bigger and better things. Then the announcement came: Silas had been appointed as the new Department Head. He was officially my manager.
I felt a cold knot of dread form in the pit of my stomach. I remembered that day at my desk vividly, and I was certain he did too. I expected him to hold a grudge, or at the very least, make my life difficult as a form of quiet revenge for how I’d treated him when he was vulnerable.
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