Jack tried first. He strolled over holding a printed Excel sheet—raw, messy data—and tossed it onto my desk without looking at me.
"Alex, need analysis charts for this. Meeting this afternoon. Make it look professional."
I didn't glance at the paper. Just slid it back until it teetered on the edge.
"Jack. Data analysis is part of your reporting duties. It's in your job description."
He froze. His smile faltered like he'd swallowed a lemon. He wanted to explode, but the office was watching.
"Come on, help a brother out. We're all friends here."
"Sorry." I kept typing. "I'm busy too."
He stood there, face flushing. Finally snatched the spreadsheet back. As he turned, he muttered loud enough for me to hear: "Gave you a chance to save face. Idiot."
Next came Blake.
He approached with his laptop, pointing at error messages on screen.
"Hey, Little Alex," he said—that condescending nickname he loved. "Code's bugging out again. Looks like that issue from last month. Fix it for me?"
I didn't even look up.
"Blake, I'm not tech support. I can't fix your code."