Chapter 1: Reply All, Regret Everything

Subject: Re: Re: Re: Q3 Forecast (Please Stop Helping) Let me establish the facts. I have worked at Halloran & Pike for six years. I have never misspelled a client's name, never missed a deadline, and never, until Tuesday at 4:47 p.m., pressed Reply All on an email describing a colleague's presentation as 'a hostage situation conducted in PowerPoint.'

The colleague in question is Julian Voss. He sits in the glass office directly opposite mine, where he can watch me work, which he does with the relaxed attention of a man at an aquarium. He has the kind of jaw that makes junior analysts forget their passwords. I have never once admitted this, and I did not plan to start in writing.

The colleague in question is Julian Voss.

The email went to ninety-one people. I know because the little counter in my stomach tallied each one. My phone lit up with a message from the intern: 'Is it true you're resigning?' I wrote back, 'Only from caring.' Then I sat very still, like a woman who believes the building might forget her if she stays quiet enough.

Julian did not storm over. That would have been manageable. Instead he leaned back in his chair across the glass, found my eyes, and slowly raised his coffee cup in a toast. Then he typed something. My inbox chimed. Subject: Hostage Situation, Part Two. Body: 'Dinner Thursday? I'd like to negotiate terms.'

I closed the laptop. I opened the laptop. I read it again, looking for the trap, and found only a man who had decided to enjoy himself at my expense. My reply took twenty minutes and said: 'I do not negotiate with people who use transitions that smoothly.' He wrote back one word: 'Noted.' It was the most threatening thing anyone had ever sent me.

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