Agency

In Which Otto Has a Suggestion

Monday again

Berry and Otto left the office so they wouldn't be overheard. They'd come, instead, to sit in the communal din of Quantum Coffee -- the newest, hippest, most elegantly spare and therefore agency-drone-attracting coffee shop in the area.

Quantum was known for long pour-over coffee, which requires the orderer to wait in interminable hell while the bearded and/or wool-capped barista pours a thin stream of perfectly heated water over a perfectly crafted paper cone full of perfectly acidic, bitter grounds with aching deliberation. As a result, on any given day, at any given hour, the Quantum lobby is full of people waiting. In peak periods, it can get so crowded that people find themselves rammed as closely together as on a morning subway; phones lifted above the crowd to capture the elegant chaos for their Insta feeds.

Berry and Otto expedited their hellish wait by ordering plain old americanos, which, by Italian espresso law, couldn't be subjected to the hipster pour, but had to be speedily and efficiently whizzed through an old-fashioned espresso machine and into a cup.

For seating, the coffee shop offered only long bench tables, permanently occupied by oversized headphone-wearing millennials and their oversized sticker-littered laptops. In addition to a universal love of gray hoodies and sleeve tattoos, they shared a particular earnest busy-ness that made it feel more like a communal office space than a public space — a workplace for the new gig economy.

As people with salaries and assigned desks (and without tattoos and hoodies, gray or otherwise), Berry and Otto were obvious interlopers. Still, they crammed themselves into one of the communal tables and were trying to have a private, important conversation.

Otto lifted his steaming paper coffee cup to his mouth and winced as the too hot, too bitter liquid mined a path down his throat.

"How's your diaper project?" asked Berry, warming up to the critical part of the conversation.

"A literal shit storm," replied Otto without a hint of humour. "Fucking Denton and his Uber idea. After the research fiasco, we'd already burned more than half the budget. Now, the Partnerships team is saying they need what's left to secure the players and the media space. I've got no money left for the actual design."

Berry shook his head. "Niall won't let his people work if there's no budget, you know that."

"He's going to have to." Otto shrugged. "We have the idea, the partnership, and the spots. We just need, you know, the actual fucking work. If I can't get a designer to work on it... what am I going to run in those spots?"

Berry took a careful sip of his scalding coffee.

"Well," he said. "Could be worse. You could be in charge of Atrabax, who still hasn't signed their statement of work. I've been chasing them, but their procurement person is giving me the runaround."

Otto made a face and replied with typical eloquence: "Fuckers."

"The thing is, Niall's already come asking for budget to compensate for the work their team put in on the pitch."

"Have you told him you don't have the money yet?"

Berry paused. "No."

"Why don't you just tell him he has to fucking wait?"

Bery paused again. "Because I've told Allegra we have it."

"Shut the fuck up!"

"Otto, stop saying fuck. People are looking."

"Like I give a fuck what these infants think." He gestured lavishly with his open coffee. "Anyway. Shit. You've lied to the boss lady, and now the Irish wolfhound is at the door."

"Right."

"Quite a pickle."

"Right, yes, exactly."

The two men held their paper cups and considered the problem from all angles.

"What was going on between you at the party, anyway?" Otto grinned.

Berry blanched. "Nothing. What do you mean? Between who?"

"Oh, come on friend, you know I won't tell. Lips sealed. I only want to live vicariously. I saw you go into the stairwell with her." He stopped and chuckled at Berry's obvious discomfort. "Don't worry. I'm sure I was the only one who saw."

He wasn't, of course.

"Nothing happened," Berry said again. "Allegra. She just... brought me to her office. She wanted to talk about Atrabax, and she asked if I had the signature. She was, okay, no maybe she was a little close to me when she asked. Kind of twirling her hair and a little close, you know."

"I'm picturing it... keep going."

"She was definitely, I mean, I think, she might have been coming on to me."

Otto slapped the table. "I fucking knew it! Boss lady and Berry in a tree. Of all the assholes. Why not me? I'd be happy to..."

Berry cut him off. "Don't. Don't make a big deal out of it. Nothing happened. The real problem is that I lied. She asked about the contract. I panicked. I said yes, I had the signature. That we're good to go. But I don't. And we're not. And now Niall wants to start billing against it."

"Oh, fuck, that's easy," Otto said, sloshing his coffee onto the table, dangerously near the closest millennial's technology. "You just write up a fake SOW and submit it to accounting. They'll open the PO, and you can start drawing funds off it. It'll be weeks before the client's accounting team has to confirm it. With a huge corp like Atrabax? Maybe months. And when it finally comes in, the budget will be so fucking HUGE, nobody's going to give a shit that it had some early billing against it."

Berry considered Otto's solution.

"By then, I guess I'd have the real SOW signed. This is just buying time."

"Right," replied Otto. "Just buying a little time. And money. No big deal. And hey... here's another idea. Can you float me some of Margot's time under your new SOW? I could really use her help on diapers. But let's not tell David, the little shit."

Berry nodded, delighted to help his friend, who had just helped find a temporary way out of his fib.