the "replace workers with robots" client

The content writers at Taddon generally fell into a religious hush when they knew a client was coming to the office. There were always signs. This time, Robert started to march back and forth through the office almost an hour before the meeting, clicking his pen and telling people to sit up.

“A few of these meetings got kind of fucked recently,” Brian had explained to Amanda before he had gotten promoted and decided to cover his arm tattoos in too-tight button-downs. “You know, the sales guys always tell the clients that we’re staffed by, like, law school grads and industry experts. As if those people would come to Taddon to get paid twenty-eight kay to write fake reviews and comments and shit.”

Taddon’s tall tales unraveled when clients stepped into the office and saw malnourished twentysomethings stationed at an assembly line of screens and usually unable to make eye contact with anyone who wasn’t a disgruntled English major. During the last in-office client meeting, Amanda had seen the client, a tall, bony blond woman, walk through the office with the expression of someone seeing a hotdog being made.

Twenty minutes before her meeting with the executives of Frontiers Incorporated, Robert Jilenhal and Taddon’s CEO, George Cross, escorted her to George’s office. Their goal, like their desperation, was clear: to convince this new client that Taddon wasn’t founded on college graduates getting paid Chipotle salaries.

Amanda had never been in the office. The view looked down on theJohn Winthrop statue in front of the office, where unshowered skateboarders smoked cigarettes before tripping on their skateboards when trying to land the same trick.

“This is a big, big account,” George said from behind his desk, rubbing his hands and straining the material of his gray suit jacket with his bodybuilder arms. “It might be the biggest we have. Tanya wanted someone with human resource and business experience and what a brilliant stroke of luck we have you, Amanda.”

“And she was keen on meeting with you alone,” Robert added in the jingle bells of his Scottish accent. “Show her what Taddon is all about.” He flashed her a grin. “George and I will meet her at the door and bring her over here.”

She made agreeable sounds and stared at the thin blue carpet in the office, but knew that her participation in the conversation was optional. She wasn’t even sure when she had agreed to work on Frontiers Incorporated. Maybe that didn’t matter. When George and Robert burst out of the office and left her behind, she scanned the bookshelves behind George’s desk holding business books rich with no-nonsense platitudes and two rugby trophies from the University of Edinburgh.

Out the window, six stories up, the brisk blue sky breezed over the financial district, casting shadows on Winthrop Square, where gold leaves flicked like flames from a lonely elm tree. She thought about her own desk, where she was squashed between a man who didn’t believe in deodarant and a girl who ate tuna every day. The corporate ladder, from George’s desk, seemed all about climbing away from other people. Even from this modest height, life seemed better. She took a deep breath, trying to regain her composure. She didn’t want to screw this up. It was the first time Taddon had given her a real responsibility. A real opportunity.

She caught sight of a petite, raven-haired woman standing at the edge of the parking garage across the street. Her cheeks were pinched and red and it looked like she had been crying. She pulled out a pocket mirror, expertly dabbed her eyes to polish any emotion, applied lipstick, pulled a pearl necklace from under the collar of her pea coat, and strung it around her neck as she crossed the street to Winthrop Square and disappeared into the building. Amanda counted down the other companies in the other building to try and guess where the woman worked.

George Cross rapped his knuckles on the office door. “Amanda? Tanya is here.”

The raven-haired woman regarded Amanda with dark unblinking eyes. Amanda smiled and got nothing back. Behind Tanya, Robert motioned for her to get up. Amanda stood, but couldn’t take her eyes from Tanya’s, searching for tears. Tanya looked like a woman who had never cried. Maybe something had been in her eye.

“Thank you, Robert and George.” Tanya strode past Amanda to George’s office chair and thunked her shoulder bag on the desk on top of the papers already lying there.

Amanda stayed standing as Tanya took out a laptop, a folder, without looking up. “Really looking forward to getting this PR program started.” Her eyes flicked in the doorway’s direction. “I think I can take it from here, George. Robert. Thank you.”

“Have a great one-on-one,” George said with a smile pinned to his face. He nodded a few more times, even though Tanya wasn’t looking. When she looked up at him, unblinking, he closed the door.

In the sudden space of the office, Tanya’s electricity filled the room. Amanda clasped her hands in front of her waist, unclasped them. Tanya took out an iPad and a pad of paper from her shoulder bag and put them on top of her laptop. She flicked through her phone for a moment, checked the screen of her watch, then settled into George’s office chair.

“Make yourself comfortable,” she said with a single unblinking stare, then turned to her iPad.

Amanda gripped the back of the chair and lowered herself into it, like she had just recently gotten used to moving with a human body. Luckily, Tanya stayed occupied with her iPad. Across from this woman who radiated some kind of gravity simply from her presence, Amanda realized that all those business classes at Bryant, the long seminars about debating and ethics and negotiating and innovation, hadn’t prepared her for the reality of having someone in front of her. Someone who expected something from her.

Tanya searched under George’s office chair, found a lever, and raised the seat at least four inches. Amanda watched as her client rose into the air above her and finally looked down at her and blinked once.

“George says you’ve got human resource experience? Business experience?” She stared at the ceiling for a second. Amanda felt her disbelief. “I assume that’s from college. And internships.”

Was it worth trying to lie about her experience? Amanda didn’t even have enough experience to find the right words to lie.

“Yes.” Amanda’s voice cracked. “But, um, HR and business. Yes.”

“I understand.” Tanya favored her with another long gaze before swiping something on her iPad. “Frontiers needs online PR for at least twelve months. George has already handed me a pretty lengthy SLA stipulating the specific terms, but I want to go over what you’ll be doing for us. Hypothetically.”

“I-”

“Do you know what we do?” She slid her iPad around to Amanda and, with a few taps, summoned a presentation with sparing blues and whites accessorized by abstract icons. She swiped through slides with charts and titles with statements like “Experienced, Redefined” and paused on “Taking the Service Experience to the Next Level.”

She tapped the title. “Frontiers helps companies and employees by automating redundant tasks. We’ve been around since the eighties, when my husband, Harry, founded the company. Our growth was off the chart for two decades. At least half of the Fortune 500 use Frontiers in some capacity, along with some serious federal agencies we can’t name for confidentiality reasons.”

Tanya swiped to another slide that showed a big red arrow pointing down. “But my husband had been an on-premise consultant. He had done things the old fashioned way. Spent time in offices, on work sites. Gave his recommendations based on his predictive modelling.” She glanced at Amanda again. “People hate that now. They want numbers, not observations.” She swiped to another slide that showed three company logos: Robologix, Data Apptite, FutureSafe. “Last year, we acquired three companies to really help us and our clients keep innovating. There’s been major advances in machine learning. This was some bold thinking, a lot of it from our... board.” Tanya cleared her throat and swiped across new slides that showed professional photographs of grocery stores, gas stations, warehouses showing machines cutting deli meat, pumping gas, sorting packages on a conveyor belt. “If you’ve seen or used self-service kiosks at grocery stores, you get the idea. Our field engineers come and build customized solutions to automate client operations. Shipping, packaging, warehousing on the back-end and customer service and experience on the front-end. United from end-to-end by the proprietary data from oru acquisitions, which power robotics so good that they feel human. Or better than human.”

She offered Amanda a half-smile. “You like that? That one was mine.”

Amanda flashed her a smile so wide it hurt her cheeks. “It’s-”

Tanya swiped to another slide, which showed the proud crested wing of a silver office building punctured with crimson letters spelling out Frontiers Incorporated. “Our headquarters is in Waltham, but, with Mayor Lombardi’s blessing, we’re transitioning all operations to the Seaport. We’ve grown the company from two hundred to five hundred and expect to double by the end of the year.”

“And the machines?” Amanda asked. “Those are built in Waltham, too?”

Tanya laughed. “As my husband has said from Day One, Frontiers is founded on efficiency. Our factory is in Georgia, where we don’t have to deal with any collective bargaining or quota nonsense that turned Detroit into a third-world country.” She leaned back in her chair.

Amanda kept her eyes on the iPad and tried to look pensive and thoughtful before jolting upright, remembering a man with a shiny bald head and a white mustache strut a stage and tell the audience that your posture, above all, was what gave you authority. She couldn’t remember if the man had been part of a business class or a YouTube video.

“The, um, progress of the business sounds really great,” Amanda said. “Inspiring.”

Tanya clicked her blood-red fingernails on George’s desk. “Inspiring. I like that.”

“So Frontiers needs help with online reviews. And social media sentiment. Related to your robots?”

“Automation solutions,” Tanya corrected. She leaned over the iPad and thumbed an icon of a blue bird. “Incidentally, we’re already in need of Taddon’s services. My PR manager tells me that this is bad for our company, even if we’re not on this particular channel.”

A stream of angry tweets shimmered from the iPad. Every single tweet shared the same hashtag: #KeepBostonHuman. Amanda kept her face still. Trish’s stupid protest at the bar had been about Frontiers Incorporated. At the time, Amanda had been impressed that a potential client could actually stir up that amount of passion from people. Even a drama school freak like Trish. The potential of power had been the biggest, burning reason that Amanda wanted to work with Frontiers Incorporated, a client who actually meant something to someone.

Small portraits of mostly tattooed people shared posts about the evil of Frontiers Incorporated:

Tell Frontiers & @DLombardi admin to save art, not encourage profit #KeepBostonHuman

Lease for @SharedSpaces is up and now big corporation moving in – profit over art & people isn’t ok! #KeepBostonHuman

Wonderful performance art @TheWarrenBar from @TrishTastic #KeepBostonHuman

Hi everyone, thanks for supporting @SharedSpaces!! See videos of last night’s performance at sharedspaces.com #KeepBostonHuman

“I’m from the school of thought that to pay attention to something is to give it power,” Tanya said.

“I love that,” Amanda blurted. She turned red. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

To her surprise, Tanya laughed loud, her mouth open wide. “Don’t be sorry. This is the reason I wanted to go with Taddon. I wanted a twentysomething who was transparent despite themselves. Over-eager. But determined to build something big.” She chuckled to herself. “So far, Amanda, you’re filling all the boxes. So let’s test your instincts. My PR director says these things can snowball. This one woman, Trish Tastic, has almost six thousand followers. What could Taddon do to get these people to like us?”

Nothing, Amanda wanted to say. She had seen Trish last night. It was impossible for a company to get artists to like them. Unless the company paid the artists enough money. Everyone had a number, that’s what Amanda’s mom would always say. Although Amanda had never been sure if she meant a dollar amount or a phone number from the newest guy from the bar who Laura never heard from again after some specific night where he saw too much. Just buying some art and putting it somewhere would splinter the #KeepBostonHuman. Because it was obviously only pretentious artists who were mad about change. Trish just didn’t get it. No one in The Warren last night had seemed to get it. Except Brian.

“What you need to do first,” Amanda said, “is start a Twitter account for Frontiers and be very transparent about what the company is doing for Boston. We can do that, we’ve launched Twitter accounts for clients before. You need to emphasize the jobs you’ll be creating, the way that this will help the area grow. Maybe you could even support the arts community there? Like offer an art space and tweet about the art being showcased? Instagram it, post the pictures on Pinterest and Facebook? You could write articles about it and that would help if I’m also running a PR campaign across online reviews and leaving comments on news articles or social posts. I can say, well, Frontiers is actually supporting the arts and here’s the proof.”

Tanya stared at Amanda for a long time. Amanda stared back. In the murky mire of Tanya’s gaze, Amanda saw a woman who had shattered the glass ceiling and climbed on top of the patriarchy that had tried to keep her down. Amanda felt a nearly religious thrill just thinking about how quickly Tanya had dismissed George and Robert with a disregard so absolute that it became erasure.

“That is a great idea,” Tanya said, leaning back in George’s seat “One of our automation solutions just went live at Star Basket in Somerville today. We’ve got a few more launching at test sites for Tarbucks, McBurger’s and a few assisted living facilities. If I sign this contract, I’m going to need your attention on Frontiers starting Monday. Any social media thing or video or article that takes a negative view of the company needs to be answered. I don’t intend to sit idle if the brand is in jeopardy of being misunderstood by anybody, even a bunch of noisy ‘artists.’”

Tanya folded her iPad closed and slipped it back into the shoulder bag, which loomed like a coiled black serpent on George’s desk. “Over the next few months, Frontiers is totally renovating our brand new Seaport warehouse to move the rest of our team into Boston. We’re going to hire a bunch of new local talent to keep up with growing demand from local businesses. That’s job growth. And now, I’ll also tell the mayor that we’ll be supporting an arts program. We’ll call it the Boston Frontiers Arts Alliance.” She scooped her laptop and the unopened folder back into her shoulder bag next. “Amanda, if you can help Frontiers become one of the biggest companies in Boston, maybe the world, the opportunities for you and Taddon are limitless.”

A surge of some strange lightning shot from Amanda’s toes to the tips of her ears. It took her a moment, in the moment, to realize that the lightning was hope. Tanya had given her hope. A flash of light in the dark pits of herself, showing the way up. Amanda had been at Taddon for four months. She had gotten a raise. She was about to do things that didn’t just influence her world, but influenced other people’s worlds. There was no better way to know that you were in control of your life than to tell other people what to believe. In that brilliant instant, Amanda saw the sun-bright truth at people only moved themselves by moving other people and only moved other people through deeds, not feelings, not theories, not performance.

“I’m really excited to start working with you,” Amanda said. “I know Taddon can do this.”

“George and Robert have been telling me that Taddon can do this since my team started querying agencies,” Tanya said, examining her blood-red fingernails. “I’m not interested in promises. I’m interested in people.” She leaned over the desk. “I only engaged with Taddon, because I reviewed every team member of every potential gency partner. And my team found your old Tumblr. Forgotten Daughter.”

Amanda’s heart jumped into her mouth. She chewed a few times. Tried to swallow, but her throat had stopped working. Even the name sent memories swirling through her of sitting in the basement, the living room, the kitchen, the barn of so many of her mom’s boyfriends and her laptop rattling as she wrote with fire on her fingertips about searching for a purpose that didn’t come with strings attached.

Tanya shuffled a thick sheet of paper out of her shoulder bag and slapped it on the desk. She swatted her way to the last page and scrawled a signature onto it. “I’ve got a call in about three minutes, but give this to George. If you can start this PR campaign for Frontiers on Monday, we can jump right off on shutting up those lying, whining artists.”

Slipping her shoulder bag over her shoulder, she came around George’s desk and offered Amanda her hand. Amanda shook it. Tanya jerked her hand from Amanda’s grasp and took two steps back.

“Stand up when you shake people’s hands.”

Amanda stood, but her legs felt weak. This unblinking woman had read all of her old thoughts, her old dreams. It felt like she had been cut in half and Tanya could see her heart beating, naked and afraid.

They shook hands. Tanya’s grip felt like cement drying. “Look into the artists we can fund who would be part of the Frontiers Arts Alliance. None of the ones who used this Keep Boston Human hashtag, obviously.”

“I’m going to do that, like, right now,” Amanda said. “I don’t care about the contract.”

Tanya laughed and the sound sounded like sunlight. The curtain fell over her face again when she locked eyes with Amanda at the doorway. “I like you, Amanda. I chose you. I hope you don’t forget that when we start working together. I can be…” Her eyes darted out the window and returned to Amanda’s face with heavy weight. “Demanding.”

She spun around and opened the door, where George and Robert stood outside with constipated consternations, and vanished down the hall. Amanda didn’t move. The office still lingered with the static of certainty that Tanya carried with her. She tried to picture Tanya reading Amanda’s older Tumblr posts to decide on the future.

Was Frontiers a villain or a hero?

Did it matter if the purpose of power was all the same in the end?

How did some people just fill the world more than others?

Did Tanya sign things with the weight of that presence?

Amanda spun the signed contract around on the desk. The answer, to her sudden shock, was no. Tanya didn’t sign with power or even a prescence. As it turned out, Tanya signed contracts with the name of her husband, Harry McIntyre.