She’d looked at me with big gray eyes and said, “Well, your name is a little hard.”
“Bitch, it’s two syllables.”
Just kidding. I hadn’t said that, but I was thinking it. I thought a lot of things that didn’t actually come out of my mouth for fear of being labeled hostile, unlikable, et cetera. It came with the territory of being a woman, and even more so as a woman of color.
These days, with people being a little more considerate and “woke,” many were prompted to ask for pronunciation, so they didn’t butcher my name. Carol had asked more than once.
My name wasn’t Ban-oooh or Bane-oooh. Yet here we were.
Behind some of those many on-screen squares were a few coworkers snickering at my immediate roll of the eyes.
Oh, Carol. This shouldn’t still be a thing, ya know, the lack of respect to say a name correctly.
“Thanks, Cairo,” I muttered.
She gave a confused look but there was no time. I dove right into my spiel. In between segments, I checked my image in the little box at the corner of my screen to make sure my blouse hadn’t wandered down the front to expose my sexy sports bra. The fact that I even had on a bra was about the best anyone could expect from me, if we were going to be honest.
I adjusted my pajamas at the waist, tapping my feet in fuzzy, pink pirate socks underneath a throw blanket.
I offered a few visuals as I spoke. A couple of graphs, but not too many—otherwise I’d lose client attention. They could try to argue against data science, but look, numbers didn’t lie. They couldn’t keep saying they needed, for some unknown reason, a big-ass header on the landing page. God, we get it, you love your logo.
During our last meeting, we’d presented low-fidelity wireframes, which were basics. Boxes and lorem ipsum fillers for later text. This time, we had a prototype, which the UX design and UI (user interface) leads would go into next.
One of the hardest things for clients to grasp was how agile UX was. We worked in a constantly revolving circle. They couldn’t just say they wanted this app and bam! We’d have a working high-fi prototype fully designed within weeks. No. We had to start with research, conduct testing, create storyboards and site maps, UI patterns for consistency, among a hundred other tasks, and then actually code the damn thing. And then we did it all over again, testing each element until we nailed the best version.
Data science was hard to argue against, but then I turned the presentation over to Juanita, the UX design lead, and that was when the clients essentially forgot everything I’d just said.
“What about offering more options in purchasing?” one asked.
I bit my lip, wishing Juanita could tag me back in so I could pull up the journey maps and storyboard slide showing how users moved through their app. I’d spent forever designing these! These weren’t little stick figures with thought bubbles wondering how does one even open an app.
I retrieved my calm.
Gabrielle messaged me: Bhanu! You have permission to jump back in!
Aha! Back in the ring to reiterate, once again, after the clients had nearly dismantled Juanita.
I delved deeper into algorithms and pinpointed a few design suggestions that had particularly strong feedback. I then answered a few questions and, without thinking to hand it back to Juanita, handed the presentation over to the lead dev.
“Thanks, Bane,” he said, and jumped right into his overarching structural gameplay for the code team, going through an actual functioning prototype.
I glared at the screen and blinked. Damnit, Sunny. Could we go one day without this?
My name was definitely not Bane. As in the bane of his existence…or even Bane from Batman. As hot as a Tom Hardy Bane had been, I just didn’t think that was a compliment in any way.
But he wasn’t worth my calm this morning. I was too chill to respond, which probably disappointed whoever had betted on today’s pool of Bhanu vs. Sunny. He went through his segment, talking way more than he needed to. Sheesh, most devs in this business were known introverts, but here he was, loving the sound of his own voice. It was deep and gritty, more like Denzel Washington than a nerdy coder—ahem—but yeah, whatever, not my thing.
I lowered the volume and muted myself, wrapping my fingers around my warm cup.
The rain was a constant drizzle outside my Tacoma apartment, per usual for this time of year. The fireplace was going and added a nice, cozy warmth to the one-bedroom abode. I sat in the converted office corner of the living room, where the watery streams running down a frostbitten window had me feeling all sorts of ways.
Working remotely worked for me. A single woman, no kids, and approximately one year away from being a cranky old hag yelling at kids to get off her lawn. There was no traffic, no rushing in and out of the rain, no wearing uncomfortable clothes because they were “presentable” (what did sweatpants ever do to anyone except love them?), no starting fights when someone touched my lunch in the fridge, no being forced to sign cards for people I barely knew or being coerced to chip in for coffee when they never purchased the kind I liked, and best of all? I could mute anyone I wanted. It was essentially a superpower.
My thoughts drifted during Sunny-and-his-Denzel-voice’s segment. Then our client-facing portion ended once Carol had thanked everyone. She disappeared, leaving Gabrielle in a breakout room with one lead at a time.
“Bane. Bane? BAAAANNNNEEEE,” Sunny said dramatically, reminiscent of how movie heroes cried out in vengeful declaration against their archnemesis.
Ugh. Unmute.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Can we get the results of the CTA buttons ASAP? It may only take a day for you to get research done and about ten seconds to design, but adjusting any detail in code can cost us a week.”
“I’m aware of that,” I replied, swirling my coffee. He wasn’t going to get to me today, no sir.
“Are you, though?” he asked, chin on his knuckles, elbow on a chair arm as he swiveled back and forth. Oh, that familiar, dry look, like he loathed talking to me.
The number of black squares on-screen had diminished, leaving a handful of people still on camera, all team, all muted. Except Sunny. Because he loved his Denzel voice.
His hair was disheveled, like he’d just popped out of bed to make it to this meeting. I’d like to say that was a side effect of remote work, but he always looked like that. Devs were like little workaholics stuck to their many, many windows glowing with a billion lines of code.
Back at the office, when we occasionally had to meet in person, I’d often walk into his section of the floor, a large room with cubicles and glass-walled meeting rooms covered in Post-its and scribblings, to find Sunny typing away while studying three gigantic computer screens filled with a dozen windows in alternating coding languages for various pages of any given project. My soul sort of died a little every time I saw it. While I understood basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and could yes, in fact, create working, responsive prototypes from thin air, that stuff wasn’t easy or quick.
Too many lines. Too many numbers and phrases and a hundred generational variants for one simple thing. Lord, I’d rather be working in a cubicle again. Spare me an even slower death.
I wondered if he had as many computers set up at home. Probably. And right now, he was glaring right at the virtual box my head was in. I smirked, imagining his bottled-up load of loathing and no Bhanu in person to unleash it upon.
Sarah, one of my researchers, came on video and unmuted herself to chime in. “Sorry about that! It’s my fault. I’m uploading to the system now. Results are pretty solid, and I think the design team will lean toward keeping CTA buttons as is. Good news, right?” she added nervously.
