Chapter 5

By 3:00 PM, the main conference room was packed.

The employees looked excited.

The atmosphere felt less like a crisis meeting and more like an annual bonus announcement.

Chloe and Brenda sat in the front row, surrounded by their supporters.

Brenda was loud, bragging to anyone who would listen:

"I told you, Eleanor is a paper tiger."

"As long as we stand united and make enough noise, she has to compromise!"

Chloe was even streaming live on her phone under the table.

[Live! Witnessing a Gen-Z associate take down a greedy capitalist for true equality!]

I walked in right on time.

Every eye in the room locked onto me, waiting for the show.

I turned on the projector.

The screen lit up with photos of the daycare kids smiling.

They were playing in bright, spacious classrooms and eating nutritious lunches in a clean cafeteria.

In the audience, the parents couldn't help but smile.

But Chloe’s group let out quiet, mocking scoffs.

I ignored them and skipped to the last slide.

It showed the qualifications and degrees of our daycare teachers.

Every single one of them was an Ivy League graduate specializing in early childhood education.

I picked up the microphone, my voice echoing clearly through the room.

"This daycare, from planning to opening, cost twelve million dollars."

"All equipment meets the highest safety standards."

"Every teacher was recruited from the best private academies in the city, lured here with triple their usual salary."

"The organic food the children eat daily is sourced from a premium farm three hundred miles away."

"The total monthly cost per child is twenty-three thousand dollars."

"And yet, I have never charged a single employee a single penny for this."

Silence fell over the room. You could have heard a pin drop.

The employees who had been snickering froze.

Even Chloe’s live stream chat went quiet for a few seconds.

I saw Maya Jenkins, our lead engineer and a single mom, look down as her eyes welled with tears.

Just last week, she had sat in my office crying, telling me how relieved she was that she could finally focus on her work.

Now, she sat in the crowd, her head buried low.

I scanned the shocked, uneasy faces in the room.

"I thought that by taking away your biggest worry, you could focus on your work with peace of mind."

"I thought kindness would be met with kindness."

"But I was wrong."

My gaze landed directly on Chloe’s face.

"I was wrong because I overestimated the decency of some, and underestimated the greed of others."

Chloe looked uncomfortable under my gaze, but she quickly lifted her chin and snapped back.

"What does any of this matter? It’s still unfair!"

"Do those of us without kids deserve to be ignored?"

"You're just using your wealth to flex your privilege and hold us hostage!"

Her words rippled through the crowd, sparking murmurs of agreement.