✅ The Littlest Intern

8. Manpower

This bonus chapter is dedicated to Kevin, with thanks for all the support you have given me. Without people like you, I wouldn't be able to keep on writing so much. Thank you!

"Hagen!" I called out, striding across the office. "Hagen, are you here?"

"In here," the reply finally came from one of the side rooms. I never knew where to find people, so it was good that people were willing to talk... when it came to work issues, at least. I walked in and saw Miranda Hagan trying to divide her attention between her sketchbook and a computer. She was a dedicated team member, as well as a designer, and it was quite out of the ordinary that I would have to talk to her about anything like this. But I was the lead on this particular project; so it was all my fault if everything went sideways.

"Working on something?" I asked.

"The Webber account," she said. "I sent the sketches through, and Blandsdale loves it, but turning the sketches into a digital form is... less than optimum."

"I can understand that," I said. Hagen was one of our best designers, and I really didn't want to cause her problems if she was tied up with other projects. On the other hand, I'd received an email from an actual client wanting to know where the colour swatches for his new logo had gotten to. "You're stretching yourself pretty thin these days. I need to get a time estimate for the Orberg contract."

"Oh, hell," she said. "Yeah, I should have been working on that today. Sorry for the delay. I just... I've got the colours, but the layout isn't as simple as they think it should be. They're talking like it's a logo, but they want the logo to be the core of the web design and marketing media. And that means that I have to make sure that the proportions fit in with all the different media they've requested. There's so much gruntwork before I can finish the design. And we're expanding so fast, I couldn't find any clerical staff to shove that stuff onto."

"Yeah, everybody's overworked," I said. I didn't understand her precise problem, but I knew she needed someone to help her with taking some measurements or something before she could give me the files that the client needed. And I knew that a lot of our supposedly-non-creative employees were taking on actual design tasks, because in the past year our reputation had drawn in more clients than we knew how to deal with. Whether it was design, marketing, information systems, or legal, everybody knew that we were the firm to come to if you wanted your business to branch out in a new direction. But there was one answer that seemed logical to me.

"You could ask the intern," I suggested, accompanying the words with a half shrug.

"It's pretty involved," she said. "I need to know that the measurements are all right."

"How long will it take you to show her what you want?" I asked, and realised I was sticking up for Carter in the same way Bracewell had done with me. "Quicker than doing it yourself, I'm sure. You think you want to double-check all her work, I knew I did the first time I gave her a ton of EMCR's. But she knows what she's doing, and I learned pretty quickly that she's a smart girl."

"Who failed high school?"

"Who missed some exams because of external circumstances," I said, and then knew I needed to walk it back. "I don't know the full story and it's not my place to ask, but she's an orphan, and there's reasons beyond capability that she didn't do well on her exams. But you remember the aptitude tests they gave us all before we could move to Upper Ashfields, don't you? She got a pass on the qualifications because of extenuating circumstances, but that meant that she had to prove her worth on the aptitude tests. And she did. I didn't believe it at first, but I've seen her work now, and I know she's fast, accurate, and diligent on any kind of paperwork. We all should be using her abilities more."