Page 11 of My Boss

“Then how do you know what the turnover was for the whole year if you just printed the files?”

“I counted in the elevator.”

The car slows down, there is the sound of the turn signal being turned on, and we pull over to the side of the road. Engler pulls the handbrake, switches on the emergency lights and turns toward me.

“Maria, perhaps I did not make myself clear enough,” he begins in a serious tone.“Our customer has committed a serious breach of the rules, and he expects us to provide professional assistance and a thorough approach, not calculating on the fly amounts that are in the millions of euros.”

“Not on the fly but standing up, in the elevator.” I open the folder, pull out the printouts of the last twelve months preceding the merger and hand them to Jan. “If you don’t believe me, check for yourself.”

His nostrils flare, but his expression remains unwavering. A true Stoic.

“Maria. These are neither the conditions nor the time for such calculations. Analyzing such data is hours of work in Excel, not four minutes of pasting amounts into a calculator on your phone, which you apparently did while riding the elevator from the thirty-third floor to minus one.”

“I didn’t use a calculator. I did it in my head.”

His eyebrows shoot up high. He definitely thinks I’m out of my mind. And since I much prefer to be perceived as a freak (something I’d grown accustomed to in school) rather than as a person missing a few folds under her skull, I add with a smile, “Tell me any two complex numbers above one hundred thousand.”

“Pardon?”

“You don’t believe me that I calculated the annual turnover correctly in four minutes, without using Excel. So please propose any two numbers and I’ll give you the result of their addition. If I make a mistake, you have the right to dismiss me. If, on the other hand, the result is correct, you will apologize to me, give me a discretionary bonus for the month, and do something about that broken air conditioner above my desk, which is supposedly in working order.”

The expression on Jan’s face—priceless. He looks as if he has just realized that he has hired a madwoman. He keeps staring at me. He thinks. Either he’s going to throw me the hell out of the car right now, or…

He reaches into his pants pocket for his phone, types something on the screen, and while I can’t read any emotion from his face, I’m sure he’s just sending a text message to the head of the HR department with instructions to prepare a termination notice for Maria Gabara.

I’m feeling a hot flash coming. Well, it’s game over. And why did you stick your neck out, you moron? What for?

“Seven hundred and eight thousand nine hundred and twenty-one plus eight hundred and thirty-nine thousand and ninety-six.” Jan’s voice rings out unexpectedly.

My jaw drops because, damn, he surprised me. But not so much that my mind doesn’t automatically switch to a logical track. My brain sends a signal in a split second—a string of numbers appears before my eyes, which I utter in one exhale:

“One million five hundred forty-eight thousand seventeen.”

Jan squints.

“Add three hundred and twenty-seven thousand four hundred and fifty-three.” He throws the number at me, his thumbs moving efficiently across the phone screen.

I smile under my breath.

“One million eight hundred and seventy-five thousand four hundred and seventy,” I answer without hesitation.

Engler glances at the display, at me, then types something on the phone, pronouncing more numbers:

“Add three million nine hundred seventy-three thousand nine hundred sixty-eight.”

Oh, you doubting Thomas. I roll my eyes and answer without letting my breath out, “Five million eight hundred and forty-nine thousand four hundred and thirty-eight.” I tilt my head and look at the boss. “We can drag this out to googol. I don’t mind, but by any chance were you in a hurry to see a customer?”

Jan raises his eyes from the phone. He has the Excel #ARG! written all over his face. I can see from him that he can’t rationally explain what’s going on. Hahaha. That got him hooked. This is the first time I’ve seen such a look on his face. And I’ll be damned, that look is worth the five million I got from adding up in the last minute.

He puts his cell phone in the holder on the windshield, glances in the rear-view mirror, releases the brake, switches off the hazard lights, turns on the blinker, starts the car and, after driving some twenty meters, makes a U-turn in the middle of the road.

“Yyyy… Did you forget something from the office?”

Instead of responding, he utters a voice command to connect with the customer.

Over a Bluetooth connection, a male voice sounds in the speakers,

“Good morning. We’re just getting ready for the meeting and…”

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