Page 100 of The Price of Scandal

My office on a Sunday looked much like my office on a Wednesday. I was going to have to re-institute required weekends off for the team.

It wasn’t that I was a whip-cracking, demanding boss. I’d simply hired people who cared very deeply about their jobs.

Which was why I was in the midst of a Chinese-takeout-fueled informal staff meeting on a Sunday afternoon.

Rowena pointed her chopsticks at one of the screens on the wall. Her feet, clad in scarred combat boots with magenta laces, were propped up on the metal top of the conference table. “Okay, screen one,” she said around a mouthful of pork lo mein. “These are Emily Stanton’s highest performing social media posts in the past month. Pre- and post-kerfuffle.”

We didn’t like the term “scandal.” Created by my verycreativeteam, our rating scale of undesirable situations began at Oops and escalated to the top with WTF. WTF was reserved for Code Black, angry mob, nuclear fallout. Emily’s situation fit in at kerfuffle on the higher end of challenge but still winnable.

Rowena walked us through the data—no real surprises. A large swing of general attention. A significant uptick in negative perception. Trolls had crawled out of the woodwork to add their worthless two cents.

Even after all these years of “fixing,” it surprised me how many people took such vicious pleasure in eviscerating their fellow humans. Often for such infractions that included having the audacity to star in a movie, write a book, or—God forbid—not be a size eight or smaller. Were I a bigger person, I would feel pity for them. But I wasn’t. So I simply wished each one of them a scorching case of herpes and moved on with my day.

“So our beloved data whores coughed up this gem,” Rowena said, clicking to the next slide.

The data whores—or analysts, as they were called for human resource purposes—were Ancarla, a former CIA analyst, and Roger, a world champion gamer/semi-pro hacker, that I had enticed into the corporate world with generous bonuses and flexible schedules. Half the time they didn’t even come into the office, and when they did, one of them was invariably in pajama pants. Somehow, I’d ended up with both of them present on a Sunday.

Ancarla chomped on a stem of black licorice, dessert to her beef and broccoli, and then pointed it at the screen.

“You’ll see the spike in media mentions here the night of the kerfuffle. It’s stayed consistently high since. The smiley face line denotes our measurement of public positivity—likes, nice comments, wardrobe items selling out, etc. The barfing face line represents the trolls, the baddies, the ‘how dare you be a human’ judgies.”

Every time the vomiting faced negative line redrew itself, a fart noise sounded.

I was the only team member over the age of thirty, and sometimes they made me feel like I was over seventy.

“Stanton had a pretty sterling rep prior to this deal,” Roger said, picking up the thread. He had an open energy drink at his elbow and two iPads in front of his sweet and sour soup. “Squeaky clean, kinda boring. Should have called us in before this deal to make her more likable.”

I agreed with that assessment. But most leaders didn’t realize they could use some humanizing in the public’s perception until it was too late.

“The baddies have a good run for these dates. And then—”

“Along comes Derek Price in a tux with his hand just coasting into inappropriate ass grab territory,” Rowena observed.

The image I’d posted to Emily’s Instagram from last night appeared on the screen.

“Daaaaaaaaamn,” Lance said, pretending his glasses had steamed up.

We did make an eye-catching couple, I thought smugly. Emily with her polished platinum looks. And I was certainly no slouch either.

“Don’t keep us in suspense,” I said.

The next slide twirled onto the screen with a digital “woo hoo.”

The smiley faces were the clear victors as of about 7 p.m. last night. Leaving the barf faces meekly descending toward the bottom.

“Derek, I’d like you to consider dating all future clients,” Rowena quipped.

“All in favor,” Roger rumbled.

“Aye.”

“The ayes have it. Sir Derek will prostitute himself for the good of the company henceforth.” Roger was also really into Renaissance fairs.

I sighed.

“I dunno. What if this turns out to be the real thing?” Ancarla asked, reaching for another stick of licorice.

“It’s fake. You can’t build real off of fake,” Lance argued.