The report was not entirely dishonest. Several of Hawthorne's campaigns had reached more potential customers than the previous year's efforts, and premium vehicle sales in selected regions had improved. What Vanessa did not mention was that the advertising team had used expensive outside agencies, promotional discounts, and a measurement method that counted repeated exposure as reach. Olivia had written a separate analysis showing that some of the supposed growth represented the same customers seeing the same advertisements again and again, not forty percent more people considering a purchase.
Olivia had tried to include that qualification in the board presentation. Vanessa removed it the night before, explaining that executives did not want a technical lesson in audience measurement. When Olivia objected, Vanessa told her that a good analyst learned to make leadership comfortable with the conclusions. The revised slides still had Olivia's data tables beneath them, but the credit line on the strategy page had been replaced with Vanessa's name. Olivia considered protesting again, then remembered the probationary review scheduled for her next month.
"Is the final presentation ready?" Vanessa asked when Olivia entered.
"Almost," Olivia said. "The qualified-customer conversion slide still needs the adjusted baseline, and I would prefer to include the methodology note." Vanessa looked up from her laptop with obvious irritation. "I have been preparing for this promotion for six months. I am not going to weaken the strongest numbers we have because you can't bear to let a chart look impressive." She told Olivia to remove the note and send the deck to Richard Hayes before ten.
Olivia obeyed the instruction to distribute the official deck, but she saved the underlying calculation in the standard research archive under its original date. She had learned that keeping an accurate version of her work was not the same as starting a fight. At the bottom of the analysis was a list of invoices from three marketing vendors whose descriptions did not line up with the campaign milestones being reported. She had asked accounts payable about them twice and received no clear answer, although she could not tell whether the problem was an error, poor documentation, or something more serious.
Vanessa caught her looking at the archived file. "We're not discussing administrative trivia today," she warned. "The new owner is reviewing senior leadership, and I intend to walk out of that meeting with the vice president appointment." She glanced toward the photograph of a Manhattan penthouse open on her personal phone. "I've already looked at a place on Fifth Avenue. I am not working this hard to live an ordinary life."
Olivia thought briefly about her own rented apartment, the train she took home, and the money she sent her mother each month. None of those things felt like failures to her, and she was tired of hearing Vanessa describe a normal life as though it were a punishment. She gathered the binders, checked the projector connection, and asked whether the department's other analysts would be allowed to answer questions about their work. "They'll answer if I ask them," Vanessa said, as if the matter were too obvious to discuss.