"Sir Harold, I was just being polite. You actually dared to take it seriously?" Lester chuckled softly, a hint of open mockery in his tone. "This money—I earned it with my skills. President Schmidt saw the truth clearly. She recognized my ability and my effort."
"I wrote the core code. I worked overtime. Why do you think you deserve this money more than me?"
Lester spoke with smug satisfaction, his eyes sweeping over the private office like a conqueror claiming new territory.
"Come to think of it," he said, voice dripping with arrogance, "I should really thank you for stepping aside."
"From now on, this office... will be mine."
The look on his face, so full of conceit, was a far cry from the polite, humble intern I once knew.
"With your skills?" I took a step forward, closing the distance between us. "You mean the skill of changing variable names on interfaces other people have already debugged? The skill of reformatting existing comments, then submitting pre-organized test cases as if they were core algorithms?"
"Or do you mean the skill of pretending to code nonsense every time President Schmidt walks by, or keeping a pre-written documentation file open to look busy?"