It was time to make my move. Recognize the opportunity. Seize the day. All that fortune cookie stuff.
The maker of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, and a zillion other products we all know, eat, or use, put Facebook and Google on notice. Clean up the garbage on your platforms, or we might yank some of the billions of dollars we spend buying online ads.
(When last we left the members of the Organization of Smartphone Exporting Companies, or OSPEC, Professor Frequent Upgrade was trying desperately to convey to the world’s smartphone ministers the grave threat Warren Buffett presented to their business. But the mere sight of a butterfly had terrified them.)
I was busy watching the clock when Muldoon poked his head in.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Watching the clock. Come on in.”
He walked into my office waving two tickets.
“College hoops, at the Garden. We might be able to make tip-off,” he said. “What time you got?”
The news shook the chairman of OSPEC to his very core. A secret meeting was called, convened in a secret bunker, at a secret location in the Swiss Alps.
It was in a sterile conference room below ground, with walls painted battleship gray. There were no windows, and no artwork. The only thing hanging was a small sign that read, Organization of Smartphone Exporting Companies.
The statement landed with a thud on the dinner table like, a too hot to handle bowl of mac and cheese. Bradley Ascot looked past his seven-year old daughter, and straight at his wife, Julie. Neither wanted to acknowledge what had been said, so little Madison decided it would be good idea to make her announcement again.
“I want to be a YouTube video reviewer when I grow up,” the child said, with a wide smile indicating the news was designed to please her parents.
The interview went well, until it began. That was when the subject of the resume came up. But first there was a question about the job itself.
“We’re a fast growing website. This is a big spot, the one we have open,” Chet Dinkleberry, said. “You think you can handle it?”
“News editor, right? I’ve got twenty years in newspapers, and ten more at leading media websites, of course I can handle it,” Murphy said.