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Three Times Three

I sat staring at the dashboard. There was a line on a graph with a label: “Projected Users: 900,000”. A canyon away, nested at bosom of the graph was another: “Actual Users: 2,000”. “How much did we spend on that hardware again, Amanda?” Three months ago, I made a decision. Because of Marcy, who replied to Second Amanda’s rude and unneeded probing: “All we need is time. You have to trust the data, we’re using state of the art analytics models. I even run an electron simulation, which we all know is one of the best ways to powerful decision trees. I doubled over the electrons six times today, and each one seems to be charged nicely.” I don’t know what she meant by that. “Negatively or positively? Because if you say positively, Marcy, pull up the transcript of our last retrospective. Neptune is transiting the twelfth house. This happens once every other four cycles. The cycles communicate important, impact. This is the most impactful cycle literally ever. And that means the twelfth house’s neptune negativity is nea-”

Screaming! “Who cares! GRAPHS! Look! GRAPHS!!!” I slammed the desk as I screamed. Oops.

“Sorry. Sorry. Look:” In unison, I double finger pointed at the projection opposite marcy. “Requests per second, active sessions, and user accounts are all like, a bajillion percent lower than the projected estimates, Marcy.” Stupid Marcy chimed in. “Crucially though, they’re trending up.” I clenched. Recollecting how Marcy had stated in our last four meetings that these were premium, six nines of accurate predictions, to the hour. I clenched Everything. Everything that could be clenched, I clenched it. “Oh yeah? When does the model say the other eight hundred and eighty thousand users we provisioned hardware for, are gunna join our two thousand early adopters, Marcy?” “Amanda. Life is a bounty waiting to be claimed. What we plant today, with great effort and intention, will flourish so long we plow the soil with declarations of our honesty. I hate to live in the past, and you know I don’t need you.” I hired Second Amanda for two primary reasons, other than the obvious ones, which to get ’em outt the way, she dresses like a goth except all her clothes are yellow, and has a lovely smile.

The less obvious ones are that in the interview, I thought she was doing a creative and personable bit about seeking spiritual guidance for her decisions in business. It turns out it wasn’t a bit. And finally, I don’t know how to fire someone I don’t like, because I honestly don’t know what I’m doing. I founded this company because I didn’t want to work with ugly men in tech. Losing this company would mean having to go back, and I can’t go back.

“Second Amanda, I appreciate your wisdom. Truly, you are blessed. It’s always welcome, you know that. But right now, all I need to know is if the numbers reported here are accurate or not.”

“Right, uh, I’m not sure how to check that, I think Marcy did the metrics.” “Well, I did that a while ago. Gimme a second, let me run a few queries.”

Marcy began walloping the keyboard. Click. Clack. The wall opposite myself dominated by shelves. Each shelf brimmed with colorful collectables, arranged to inspire creativity. I sat gazing at each item, thinking about how I could creatively market the items on our website to raise funding. How many hours of runway that would buy the company if we sold them all? How many do we even have left now?

She typed. And stopped. She typed. And stopped.

“Need any help Marcy?” I caught myself grinding my teeth.

“No, no. Just running the numbers, almost there.”

Typed. And stopped.

I quickly rose up, chair falling over as I rose. I picked it up as I sat back down.

“OKAY uh, done. Done. Looks like the metrics are accurate. And the analysis is accurate as well. Though, I noticed one thing which seemed off.” Maybe it’s all okay, maybe we’re good to go. “Well, next time we shouldn’t leave everything up to Marcy, perhaps if you gals joined me during our weekly meditations, we could have all come together and manifested a solution weeks ago.” Second Amanda laid another egg, I wasn’t gunna be egged on. “Second Amanda, please just let Marcy finish.” “I would never stop another soul from speaking their power to word.” Except ya know, when Second Amanda blocked Marcy in slack. She’d posted about how we should all stop washing our hair. As she revealed that she hadn’t showered in two weeks, and none of us noticed. To which Marcy had replied “Oh, no you reek. I thought you were going through menopause or something and didn’t want to be rude though.”

“Well, anyway. It seems like the ad campaign we paid for served only 100 ads. I think Second Amanda handled that.”

“Oh, checking.”

Second Amanda started typing. Peck. Peck. She pecks the keyboard like an old person, I’m pretty sure she’s not even thirty.

“No, that’s not right, all the ads went out.”

She flipped her macbook around, showing a notepad with giant font displaying ‘ADS SERVED: 300,000’

“Second Amanda, did you just write this?”

“No, I copied it from the website, but the font on the website is too small, so I put it here and increased it.”

“Oh.. well. Okay, so the metrics for the ads are wrong?” I said.

“Yeah.. I guess so.” Marcy sighed. “I’m sorry guys, I’ll get back to work and figure things out.”

“Well, figure it out Marcy. Six million dollars on hardware, and, yeah that’s my bad, but if you can’t figure this out we are done for.”

“I know.. I’m sorry.”

“All is forgiven when right is wronged, Marcy.”

The meeting adjourned.

Marcy. Marcy, just get it together Marcy. I’m a real analyst. I’m a real computer expert. It’ll be fine! I have the tools to fix this.

I prompted chatGPT, my greatest tool: “How can I fix this?”

It began: “Alright, Marcy, let’s figure this out. Here’s what we know:

Metrics Mismatch: The user projections were way off. Your model said 900,000; reality says 2,000. Ad Campaign Confusion…”

I skimmed over the reply as it spat it out bit by bit. Kinda lost, not sure what it’s saying, but whatever. Second Amanda piped up:

“How much did we spend on that hardware again, Amanda?” Second Amanda was draped in yellow, bright yellow beanie, bright yellow jumper skirt, and a mustard yellow blouse. Cute.

I recited word for word chatGPTs reply:
“All we need is time. You have to trust the data, we’re using state of the art analytics models. I even run an electron simulation, which we all know is one of the best ways to check decision trees. I doubled over the electrons six times today, and each one seems to be charged nicely.”
I don’t know what it meant by that.
“Negatively or positively? Because if you say positively, Marcy, pull up the transcript of our last retrospective. Neptune is transiting the twelfth house. This happens once every other four cycles. The cycles communicate important, impact. This is the most impactful cycle literally ever. And that means the twelfth house’s neptune negativity is nea-”

I typed her reply into the chat, it spat back out to me: “Second Amanda is Retarded.” I reported the reply for featuring ableist language, which is not welcome in a professional environment. I did not repeat this part.

Amanda Amanda screamed and freak slammed the meeting room table: “Who cares! GRAPHS! Look! GRAPHS!!!” This was pretty normal, she was an animated boss. But she hadn’t fired me yet, so I was cool with that.

“Sorry. Sorry. Look:” She ‘person with flashy lights on a runway directed’ our attention to the projector. “Requests per second, active sessions, and user accounts are all like, a bajillion percent lower than the projected estimates, Marcy.” Oh, I don’t need chatGPT for this one, the numbers were slowly rising. “Crucially though, they’re trending up.” It feels good to know how to read graphs, I have learned a lot over the last year. Even if I am still lost, I am a professional.

“Oh yeah? When does the model say the other eight hundred and eighty thousand users we provisioned hardware for, are gunna join our two thousand early adopters, Marcy?” Hm. I typed this into chatgpt. Second Amanda started saying something, so I also started transcribing that into the prompt as well:
“Amanda. Life is a bounty waiting to be claimed. What we plant today, with great effort and intention, will flourish so long we plow the soil with declarations of our honesty. I hate to live in the past, and you know I don’t need you.” After I typed that, it replied ‘Do not type anything Second Amanda says to me’. Which was a strange thing to type, I reported the reply as being unprofessional and uninclusive, then only gave it Amanda’s words as requested.

Whilst it was in the middle of replying, Amanda piped up. “Second Amanda, I appreciate your wisdom. Truly, you are blessed. It’s always welcome, you know that. But right now, all I need to know is if the numbers reported here are accurate or not.”

“Right, uh, I’m not sure how to check that, I think Marcy did the metrics.” I opened a new tab, copy and pasting my notebook of project notes with the prompt “PLEASE HELP FIX” “Well, I did that a while ago. Gimme a second, let me run a few queries.”

I started typing. It replied. I didn’t understand what it was saying. I peeked over at Amanda, her eyes lids were loaded into her skull, her gaze piercing my every stroke. I typed more. It replied.

“Need any help Marcy?” I had all the help I needed. I turned my laptop away slightly more so she couldn’t see what I was doing.

“No, no. Just running the numbers, almost there.”

I ran out of chatGPT tokens, and had to go to claude, which meant more waiting. Amanda jumped out of her chair in a girl boss fit.

Claude spat out the secrets I was after:

“OKAY uh, done. Done. Looks like the metrics are accurate. And the analysis is accurate as well. Though, I noticed one thing which seemed off.”

Claude had typed: “Second Amanda didn’t run any ads because she is literally high on opoids right now, you have to fire her.” I reported this, these models were not without fault, and they had a long way to go.

Second Amanda interrupted me as I paused to read before reading aloud.

“Well, next time we shouldn’t leave everything up to Marcy, perhaps if you gals joined me during our weekly meditations, we could have all come together and manifested a solution weeks ago.” She’s probably right, I didn’t go to those meditations because I slept in by accident. “Second Amanda, please just let Marcy finish.” I got this. “I would never stop another soul from speaking their power to word.” That’s not true actually, she blocked me on slack. I wanted to tell her she smelled like cat piss had crawled into her deepest most personal spaces and decided to rot there, but chatGPT helped me clean it up.

She still has me blocked, but Amanda types anything I need to tell her for her.\ Funnelling claude earlier snide remark into Gemini, I spoke allowed its advice.
“Well, anyway. It seems like the ad campaign we paid for served only 100 ads. I think Second Amanda handled that.”

“Oh, checking.”

Amanda is really quick at this stuff, sometimes I wonder how she learned. “No, that’s not right, all the ads went out.” Uh oh, I messed up again.

She picked up her book, instead of using the projector I guess, she had notepad open, it said: ‘ADS SERVED: 300,000’

“Second Amanda, did you just write this?”
She probably put it here to magnify it.
“No, I copied it from the website, but the font on the website is too small, so I put it here and increased it.”
See? Amanda is kind of judgey at times, but she never holds it against you.
“Oh.. well. Okay, so the metrics for the ads are wrong?” I said.

“Yeah.. I guess so.” I let out a sigh, chatgpt wrote all the code for that, I shoulda used claude. “I’m sorry everyone, I’ll get back to work and figure things out.”

“Well, figure it out Marcy. Six million dollars on hardware, and, yeah that’s my bad, but if you can’t figure this out we are done for.”

“I know.. I’m sorry.”

“All is forgiven when right is wronged, Marcy.”

The meeting adjourned.

I wear yellow every day.
“How much did we spend on that hardware again, Amanda?” I asked a question helpfully, this is working. I’m a great worker.
Amanda said some stuff. Marcy said more stuff. I wasn’t really listening.
Amanda screamed about graphs. Graphs are boring. I prefer crystals and knowing the future.
Marcy said something about trends. Sometimes stars have trends, but it’s hard to know. Stars are powerful.
Amanda asked Marcy a question. I don’t know what she said.
I replied with some spiritual stuff. I’m very spiritual. Astrology is real, and I follow its commands.
Amanda said she appreciates my wisdom. I know I’m wise. I’m the wisest person here, and I’m glad she recognizes this.
“Second Amanda, please just let Marcy finish.” Amanda interrupted me. Rude.
“I would never stop another soul from speaking their power to word.” I do this all the time, but I don’t think they know that, the stars are great keepers of my secrets.
Marcy said something about ads. Ads are a waste of time, I prayed for our app. It takes time for the prayers to reach the stars.
“Oh, checking.” I pretended to check something.
I wrote a number in notepad. Big numbers are impressive. If you tell someone it’s in notepad because of the font size, they believe you.
“Second Amanda, did you just write this?” Amanda asked. She’s so restless and full of toxins. She should try my juice blends more often.
“No, I copied it from the website, but the font on the website is too small, so I put it here and increased it.” Lying is easy, trust is for the heavens alone.
They talked more about metrics and ads. I zoned out.
“All is forgiven when right is wronged, Marcy.” I’m so profound. The meeting ended. Finally. Meetings are boring.