Maya works in the bowels of the company, figuratively. She accomplishes Very Important Things, but I don’t remember what they are. I’m a little embarrassed that I don’t remember her job title or what she does after three years of occasional chit chat, and if I asked her now, it would be weird. So I listen to her carefully for clues. But she talks about things like strategic placement and cost vs. payment ratio, which doesn’t nail it for me.
Maya said the goth guy who works in the mail room wasn’t the sharpest fang in the mouth. And she called our receptionist glacially fast.
Darlene from the sales department—excuse me, business development department—quit last month. Before she left, she told Maya, “You’re as cold as a stone in a Baskin-Robbins freezer that has been lifted with a crane onto a barge and transported past the loose ice floes in the Antarctic, placed on an ice shelf, carried by snow vehicle as close to the North Pole as humanly possible, then left for the dead of winter.”
“You mean South Pole, dearie,” said Maya. “Have a good life.”
I ran into Darlene a week later and admitted that I didn’t know what Maya does. Darlene said she didn’t know, but it had to do with leveraging paradigm shifts and cannibalizing value propositions.