Whid
It’s not like this day has started marvelously.
It’s not that it was entirely the intern’s fault, that he could force-push on the master branch, messing up the whole history completely. Someone has made a mistake much earlier, when setting up the permissions.
But that someone didn’t have a clear pointer, he didn’t have a name. The intern did. Paul.
It’s not that they were angry at Paul for giving them half of a heart attack. Okay, maybe a bit. But not openly, so that should count! Or… it depends on how “openly” is defined. It was just the two of them in the office — Arthur and Hubert —, so it was no harm to mention Paul’s name with a slight dissatisfaction. But only a few times. Per hour.
Neither of them knew that this issue would look much less significant in just a few hours. They didn’t even realize it yet, when that woman stepped into their office, while they were having their afternoon coffee break, taking little sips from their cups.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” said the lady, who had entered without knocking, and accidentally left the door open. “I’m in desperate need of a time tracking app. I would like you to implement it for me.”
Hubert lifted his eyebrows. Arthur saw the danger that his colleague might reply something impolite, so he quickly took over the conversation.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, we are not freelancers. But luckily for you, there are already tons of apps that can offer time tracking. Maybe we can help you find a proper one.”
“Not me!” said Hubert not particularly helpfully, and to show his ignorance, he turned back to his laptop and put on his headphones.
“No, you don’t understand.” The lady continued. “All the apps are so complicated. I need a simple one.”
“You don’t understand!” Arthur was a patient guy, but this situation was too absurd for his patience. “We work here, in this company, you know, where you just entered. We have no idea who you are, but you are definitely not the person, who assigns us tasks. We can’t help you with writing an app. Let us know — no, let me know, if you need help with finding one that already fulfills all your requirements.”
The lady just shook her head. “You will write this app for me. In Kotlin Native.”
“WHAT?!?” asked Hubert in a somewhat upset tone. He was curious about the conversation, so he actually didn’t switch his headphones on.
“Time tracking app. In Kotlin Native. It has to be very simple, like I just click on a button and it records time. And then I click on a button and it stops recording time. And it has to run on Mac and Windows. You know… interop with Swift and .NET? Just a dream coming true!”
The guys were silent. They looked at each other in disbelief, and then back on the woman, whom neither of them knew.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I have to ask you to leave now. This is not funny and we have to work,” said Arthur, and he stood up to show the way.
“I was not joking,” said the lady. Then she clapped twice, and our protagonists turned into a snail and a frog. Magical ones, to be precise.
“???” asked Arthur, the snail.
“???” added Hubert, the frog.
They didn’t really feel like they could be blamed for not being able to find the proper words to form an actual question.
“Okay, so let’s say it differently. You can turn back into your original forms only if you implement this app for me. Here are my requirements.” The lady gave them a victorious smile when she laid a small paper on Hubert’s desk, and then headed to the door. “You get 24 hours. Oh, and by the way… I’m the new Organizational Change Specialist Manager.”
This time she didn’t forget to close the door.