The Hygienist's Challenge

Okay so you're probably wondering how a dental hygienist ends up working at a tech startup, right? Trust me, I wonder about it too sometimes. The answer is boring and kind of amazing at the same time.

My name is Mason, I'm thirty-five, and for eight years I cleaned teeth in a strip mall office in Denver. Then my girlfriend of five years, Becca, left me last spring, about nine months ago now, and I did what any freshly dumped guy does. I cried on my buddy's couch for two weekends and then updated my resume at two in the morning.

His name is Leo, and he's a product manager at a company called SparkByte. They do something with apps for gyms, I never fully understood it. Anyway, Leo texted me one night like, "Dude, we're hiring a wellness coordinator, basically they want someone to run the health stuff for the whole office, teeth included, and it pays more than the strip mall."

And I was like, "You're messing with me."

He was not messing with me. So I interviewed, and apparently the founders loved me because I was the only candidate who didn't say "synergy" once. Now I sit in this converted warehouse with exposed brick and standing desks and forty engineers who drink energy drinks like water, and I teach them about flossing. I gave a seminar last month called "Your Gums Are a Startup Too." People clapped! Grown software engineers clapped for a gums seminar!

So that's me. Hungry for a fresh start and maybe a little hungry for respect, you know? The hygienist guy at the tech company. It gets old.

Then last week the CEO, his name is Grant, he's fifty-one and wears the same fleece vest every single day, sent out this all-hands email about the innovation sprint. A week of teams building whatever they wanted, and at the end, one person would be named Employee of the Year and get a promotion. The email said the winner would be whoever "best embodies innovation and teamwork."

I wasn't even technically competing. I just helped teams with their demo health data, made sure nobody died of caffeine, ran the snack table. But people kept coming up to me all week like, "Mason, your protein bar station saved my life," and honestly it felt pretty good!

There was one problem, and her name is Hayley.

Hayley is a senior software engineer, thirty-two, been at SparkByte three years, and she is the most competitive human being I have ever met. She's also funny and sharp and has this laugh that makes the whole floor look up, which is not a thing I should probably admit here, but you asked. Well, you didn't ask, but you're reading.

We were not friends. Not enemies either, exactly, but we'd had this ongoing thing since the vending machine incident of my first month, where I replaced all the candy with almonds and she gave a speech about it that I swear got a standing ovation.

Anyway, sprint week happened, and at the end of it we all gathered in the big open area by the ping pong table on Friday night for the announcement. Only about fifteen people left in the office, everyone else had gone home, just us and the blue glow of monitors and the smell of cold pizza. Which was fine, by the way, the pizza. It was fine.

Grant got up on a chair. He actually stood on a chair, this fifty-one year old man in his fleece vest.

"So," he said, rubbing his hands together. "This was our best sprint ever. And the vote was close. Really close."

"Boo, get to it!" somebody yelled. It might have been me. It might have been Hayley. We'll never know.

"The Employee of the Year," Grant said, "who gets a promotion and a special prize package, is... Hayley!"

And the place went nuts, and Hayley threw both arms in the air like she'd won the World Cup, and I clapped like a good sport because what else do you do, right? I was a little gutted, honestly, but I'd helped her team all week so it wasn't like I could be mad.

Then Grant said the part that ruined everybody's weekend, in a fun way.

"The prize is a couples' spa retreat package! Two nights at the Juniper Springs Resort, up in the mountains. Couples only, that's the deal with the vendor, one suite, two people."

And Hayley's arms slowly came down.

"Oh no," she said.

"Oh yes," Grant said, delighted, because executives love watching things go wrong for other people.

"Couples?" she said. "Grant. Grant, I've been single for two years. You know this. You gave me dating advice at the holiday party and it was terrible."

"It was not terrible, it was bold," Grant said. "Anyway, the certificate expires December first. Non transferable. Corporate already paid."

The whole room started laughing, and Hayley stood there with her mouth open, and I have to tell you, I felt bad for her. I really did. For about four seconds.

Then she spun around and pointed at me.

"You," she said. "You're single. You broke up with Becca in the spring. I heard Leo talking about it."

"Wow, thanks for keeping tabs on my love life," I said. "Also hi, hello, congratulations on your big win."

"Don't be cute with me right now, Mason. Are you free this weekend or not?"

I thought about it. I had exactly zero plans. My weekend plan was going to be laundry and maybe rewatching a show I'd already seen twice. Which is a sad sentence to say out loud, but there it is.

"I'm free," I said.

"Then you're my fake boyfriend for a spa weekend," she said, like she was assigning me a ticket number. "Don't make it weird."

"Don't make it weird?" I said. "You just recruited me in front of our boss."

"Congratulations, Hayley," Grant said, completely ignoring both of us, which is very on brand for Grant.

So that's how I ended up agreeing to share a suite with my work rival at a mountain spa resort. But wait, I haven't even told you about the lunch yet, because the lunch happened before the announcement and it's where things got fun.

Thursday, the last full day of the sprint, a bunch of us went to the taco place down the block. Hayley and I ended up across from each other at one of those long community tables, and it started innocent enough.

"Your team's demo looked good today," I said. "The fitness tracker thing."

"Thank you," she said, and then, with that grin, "yours looked good too. For a guy whose entire job is telling people to floss."

"My job," I said, "is the entire wellness program, thank you very much. The gums are just the beginning."

"Oh, the gums are just the beginning," she repeated, mockingly. "You put the word 'gums' on a poster, Mason. I saw it."

"That poster drove engagement. People photograph it."

She laughed, that laugh, and the two engineers next to us, Robin and Sonny, exchanged a look like they were watching a tennis match.

"So who wins tomorrow?" Robin asked. "Final answers."

"Hayley," Sonny said immediately.

"Me," Hayley said, at the exact same time.

"Wow," I said. "Not even a pause."

"Why would I pause? I've won three performance awards in three years. You've been here eight months."

"And in those eight months I reduced sick days by twelve percent," I said, and I said it smug, I admit it, I was smug.

She narrowed her eyes at me over her burrito bowl. "Twelve percent? Where did you get that number?"

"I made a spreadsheet."

"You made a spreadsheet about sick days?"

"Wellness is data driven, Hayley. You of all people should respect that."

Sonny choked on his horchata. Robin said, "Oh my god," in the way people say it when they're enjoying themselves way too much.

"Fine," Hayley said, pointing her fork at me. "When I win, I'm going to gloat so hard you'll wish you'd never learned what a spreadsheet is."

"And when I win," I said, "I'm going to be so gracious you'll cry."

"She is going to cry," Sonny said, to Robin, not even quietly. "But from winning."

Nobody cried the next night, though. Hayley won, I clapped, and now here I am, Saturday morning, standing in my apartment with a duffel bag packed for a couples' spa weekend with a woman who has spent eight months roasting me about posters.

Is it weird? Yes! Am I nervous? Also yes! Do I keep catching myself smiling about it for reasons I'm not ready to look at too closely? Maybe a little.

She texted me at nine: "Car leaves at eleven. Wear something that isn't a polo with the company logo. That's not a request."

And I stood there holding my phone and thought, this weekend is either going to be a disaster or the most interesting thing that has ever happened to me.

I grabbed the duffel and went to find out which.

The drive up to Juniper Springs took two hours, and Hayley drove the whole way like someone who criticized other people's driving. Which she does. She honked at a minivan twice.

"Sorry," she said, not sounding sorry at all. "Some people should not have licenses."

"Some people should not honk at minivans," I said. "They're just trying to get to a soccer game."

"His turn signal was on for four miles, Mason. Four."

We argued the whole drive and it was, honestly, kind of great. I hadn't bickered with somebody like that since Becca and I were first dating, and I made a mental note to never tell Hayley I compared her to Becca in my head, even for half a second.

The resort was up past the tree line, all cedar and stone and a lobby that smelled like eucalyptus. The woman at the front desk looked at the certificate, looked at us, and smiled the smile of a woman who sees fake couples every weekend.

"One king suite," she said.

"Two beds would be fine," Hayley said quickly.

"It's a couples package, ma'am. One king. It's on the certificate."

Hayley turned to me with her jaw set. I shrugged. What was I going to do, fight a front desk lady about a certificate that Grant had already paid for? No. No, I was not.

"One king," I confirmed, and Hayley made a sound through her nose that could've stripped paint.