A Christmas Family Nightmare

The Christmas family gathering was in full swing when my aunt Karen started mocking me as I reviewed some work documents on my laptop:

"Stop pretending to be so busy. We all know you only make $3,000 a month! My daughter Rachel is a real high-earner - she's such an important designer that she couldn't even make it home for Christmas!"

Seeing that I wasn't responding, she encouraged her spoiled son Peter to delete all my files while I was in the bathroom.

I was shaking with anger when I returned. "That proposal was due in 10 minutes! If I don't submit it, I'm done for!"

Aunt Karen shrugged nonchalantly. "He's just a child, how could he know any better? Your job can't be that important anyway. So what if you get fired? Maybe then you'll finally settle down and get married so your parents can stop worrying."

I couldn't help but smirk silently.

If only she knew that the proposal was actually her precious daughter Rachel's work - the one that would determine whether Rachel kept her job or not.

And I was the client who would be making that decision!

#part2

On the second day of the Christmas break, our family of three returned to my grandmother's house for the annual gathering.

I had barely sat down when I received a text from my cousin Rachel:

"Brynn, I just emailed you my proposal. Please, I'm begging you to review it ASAP. My whole career is riding on this!"

Rachel currently works as an advertising designer. Her company isn't doing well financially and is planning layoffs. They're using this collaboration with my company as an opportunity to have employees compete against each other - whoever's proposal gets selected gets to keep their job.

Before Christmas, all of Rachel's coworkers had already submitted their proposals. Only Rachel hadn't finished hers yet. She said she needed to come up with a perfect proposal to outshine everyone else, so she'd been pulling all-nighters for over a month, sleeping only two hours a day.

However, my business partner had already seen a proposal he liked and didn't want to consider any more. It was only after I pleaded with him repeatedly that he agreed to give Rachel one last chance.

My partner made it clear that meeting deadlines was also part of evaluating capability. To be fair, he said we must receive the proposal by 8 PM tonight - no exceptions!

I reminded Rachel multiple times to submit as soon as possible. But after waiting all day, she only just sent it to me now.

It was already 7:45 PM.

In our group chat, my other two partners were getting impatient. They said if it weren't for my sake, they wouldn't be wasting their Christmas working overtime.

I quickly forwarded Rachel's proposal to the group chat. At least this way, I could say I did my part for her.

Just when I thought the crisis had been averted, a red exclamation mark popped up.

No internet connection. Sending failed!

I looked up to see my 10-year-old cousin Peter waving the unplugged network cable at me and making faces.

I sighe...