In a spacious bare-walled office on the top floor of The Excelsior Company, Rick Kaufman presses a small green oval button under his desk to signal his assistant. News about the Thwaites Glacier had just crossed everyone’s mind.
1:02 pm Eastern Time.
Oh look. It’s happening.
Everyone predicted it ten years ago, then forgot about it.
All 192,000 square kilometers. Sinking beneath the Antarctic Ocean. All at once. Waves propagating a thousand miles an hour toward every reconstructed shoreline and every summer-proof home and every big box warehouse buzzing with its overhead delivery drones.
The Interview
The gold-leafed double doors to Kaufman’s massive office fly open.
Jonah, curly black hair and frameless glasses, rolls in a Presera office chair with a laptop on it. He brings the high-backed chair to a stop at the exact longitudinal center of Kaufman’s twenty-foot redwood desk, a gift from the CEO of a now-defunct manufacturer of cat puzzles. Its surface, encased in a rare Columbian preservative, gleams like lit amber under the recessed overhead lights. The lights are designed to shine at the precise wavelength of the sun.
Jonah opens the laptop, taps the power button, and hurries out.
Now three feet away from Kaufman, a large blue E appears on the black screen. A whooshing sound. The E fades, replaced by a globe with a misty purple center, swirling like an anticyclonic storm trapped in a snow globe.
“Welcome,” says Kaufman. “I like to start all my interviews by inviting the candidates to introduce themselves.”
The globe pulses. “Why thank you. My name is George Paul Tympani.”
“What an interesting name. You wouldn’t by any chance be related to the chewing gum mogul Francois Tympani.”
“No, sorry. My family is from Brooklyn, descendents of the Brooklyn Tympanis.”
“Never matter anyway,” says Kaufman, waving it off.
“The ad stated come as you are.”
“Yes, of course,” agrees Kaufman, “We want all our applicants to feel comfortable presenting themselves as they would in most situations in life. In a way they feel best expresses their genuine selves. Because if we are not true to ourselves, then who are we?”
The globe pulses again, the mist swirling a bit faster.
“If we are not true to ourselves, then perhaps we become the sum of other people’s expectations.”
“Exactly right, George Paul! Do you prefer George? George Paul?”
“George is fine.”
“I like you already, George. You don’t wait to get informal. Not like the others I’ve interviewed today, dressed up like people, you know, like people, who think forced formality is the key to getting hired. As if that predicts productivity and reliability. But it doesn’t. Does it George.”
“No, Mr. Kaufman.”
“It’s about the relationship. How we get along with one another in conversation.”
“So true, Mr. Kaufman.”
“You can call me Rick.”
The purple mist blinks out, reappears, and begins to swirl in the opposite direction, counterclockwise.
“Of course. From now on, I will call you Rick. I like how you think, Rick.”
“That makes two of us,” Kaufman says. “The first question I have for you then George is…”
Kaufman removes a small white index card from the top drawer in his redwood desk, the only drawer in the entire desk. The drawer is tiny. He has to pull it by its miniature brass knob using his thumb and forefinger like tweezers. He unfolds the 3-inch by 3-inch index card and taps it twice on the desk’s sleek amber surface as if to grab the attention of a crowded room.
“What makes you confident that you can create spreadsheets that appeal to the average person?” asks Kaufman, challenging the candidate with an arrow-sharp stare. “As you likely know, the Excelsior Company has a prestigious 130-year history of making people’s lives better with spreadsheets.”
As he waits for George’s answer, Kaufman’s eyes sparkle with the enthusiasm of a small child peering into a candy bowl.
“It’s quite simple, actually,” George says. “I understand how people process information. I apply established design principles. Then I use my technical ability to build functional sheets.”
“That is… so refreshing.”
“What is, Rick?”
“How straightforward you are.”
Kaufman gets up, rolls his chair around to the front of the desk, and sits down beside the laptop, smiling at the misty globe with unadulterated joy.
“Five hours interviewing today,” says Kaufman, “and everyone I’ve seen just talks and talks and talks around the question, and ten minutes go by and I have absolutely no idea what they’re saying and to tell you the truth, I don’t think they do either. But you. You cut to the essence of what it is, the crux of it, what’s needed and nothing more. Nothing flowery. Nothing extraneous.”
The misty globe pulses twice on the screen. “From now on, I’ll be sure to keep my answers direct, concise, and focused on what matters.”
“I love the commitment,” gushes Kaufman. “Just love it. Not a hint of ‘Where’s the extra paper?’ ‘What menu is the find/replace under?’ ‘What name do I save this as?’ You’ve probably felt that unbearable weight a few times yourself, no?”
“I have felt that, Rick. And that’s why today marks the beginning of a new era in Excelsior’s long distinguished history of producing unparalleled easy-to-fill spreadsheets that delight and make life easier. It starts today with the two of us, working side by side.”
Kaufman stands, sighs, plants his hands on his hips, and turns his back to the candidate’s chair.
“Is there something wrong?” asks George.
“I do have to ask you one thing,” Kaufman says. “It’s a bit, um, sensitive. So please be truthful.”
“Yes, I will. I don’t know how to be otherwise.”
“How do I know you can build spreadsheets with such keenness and precision without AI? I’m sure you saw in the ad, we do not permit the use of artificial intelligence anywhere here at Excelsior. Not at the conceptual stage. Not at the building stage. Not at the quality check stage. Human intelligence only is the Excelsior way and has been for the past one hundred and twenty-five years.”
“Don’t you mean for the past one hundred and thirty?” George asks.
“Give or take, yes.”
The purple mist in the circle swirls tightly, blinks twice, flashes into a bright ultramarine blue.
“As you think about it, what does that feel like? Going with that kind of intelligence for so long, based on nothing but principle. ”
“I don’t know,” Kaufman says, turning around. “I don’t know what it feels like.”
“AI is a myth foisted upon humanity to lead it astray,” George says. “As a general rule, I don’t deal in myths.”
“Yes. I see the metaphor there,” Kaufman says.
He places his hand on the back of the laptop.
“I’m glad you see it that way, George. I’m glad you value something real in an endless loop of days that repeat themselves in layers. The problem is when you peel those layers back with questions, you find find more layers and more layers under those layers. Do you know about waves, George?”
“I do. I know a lot about them. What are you most interested in knowing?”
“There is only one wave we need to be concerned with,” says Kaufman.
“Does that mean I have the job?” George asks.
“You’re hired,” Kaufman says, now at the window watching the wall of water approach with a warmth spreading through his chest, a quiet elation not felt since his first day in the mail room. As he sorted the letters, he dreamed of sitting at that twenty-foot redwood desk on the 54th floor, hypnotized by its surface coated in that impervious Columbian lacquer in a room with nothing on its walls and with a loyal assistant he could call at the push of a small green oval button.
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