Diandra
a short story
by Chip Kussmaul
Diendra couldn’t keep her mind fixed on the flow chart on the screen. Her eyes looked, but they could no longer see. Funny how that works. Sometimes, the more you look, the less you see, until you just can’t see.
Diendra turned her eyes away from the large screen hanging from the ceiling, observed the others in the conference room. As Ted droned on about sales figures while pointing at columns on the screen with his handy collapsible pointer, she looked across the conference table at Lena, who was absorbed in all that Ted had to say.
She tried to work it out. Was Lena too absorbed for her own good? Or was it some deficiency in herself, Diendra thought, that she could no longer stay focused? Her eyes shifted to the left, and there was Kevin, looking back at her with a knowing smile. He needed no words. He was telling her that he, too, was bored to tears. Diendra gave a little shrug in return. Then they both turned back to the screen, out of a sense of duty.
They refocused their attention just in time to hear Ted proclaim, pointer at the ready, “The impact of this marketing campaign is impressive. Frankly, I’ve never before seen numbers like this. We don’t always know what will or will not work, until we try it, but this one was a slam dunk. And we owe it all to Diendra…Diendra, on behalf of Carlisle and Company, I want to thank you.”
There was a warm round of applause from the dozen or so people seated at the table. All eyes were on her, including Kevin’s, whose smile was even more knowing than before.
Ted continued, after the applause died down. “Diendra, we could all use some inspiration, here. Tell us how you did it. How did you come up with such a brilliant campaign which, frankly, violates pretty nearly all the accepted practices?”
Everyone here was well acquainted, and Diendra was comfortable with them. But she didn’t really want to do this. She was intuitive, yet rational. She had ignored numbers and demographics and simply reached inside herself to find an inner voice that people would respond to. But Kevin was the only one there who would understand what she was getting at, if she told them.
“Go ahead, Diendra,” said Kevin, smiling. “Tell them how you do it.”
Diendra made up a lie that was more believable to them than the truth, one that the people at this table could comprehend. “I looked at the demographic base that we were targeting, and saw that 97% of them gain 83% of their information from their mobile devices. From that I concluded that a twenty second spot on TikTok featuring kittens would sell our product.”
“Brilliant!” proclaimed Ted. “Diendra, you’ve been with us for only a short while, but I see a great future for you at Carlisle and Company.”
Diendra nodded politely at the praise. Everyone was smiling and happy for her. But Kevin’s smile was different, deeper. He was the only one who knew that she had submitted her resignation earlier that morning.
Well, if she had already figured out that she was working with a bunch of people to whom a lie was more believable and more comprehensible than the truth, resigning was the correct move.
If Kevin's smile was as knowing as the story implies, I imagine that he would be following her outa there. 😎