I motioned for her to go ahead.
She offered the women a kind, warm smile, and they smiled back, relieved.
“How would you account for city winds?” Gabi asked. “For example, we have a courtyard on our roof where employees throughout the building can go for smoke breaks or fresh air. A lot of buildings in the cities do. And the wind up there can be absolutely insane. My dad is really into architecture, and wind is something you have to deal with when you’re building high rises. What sort of data do you have to reflect the safety of jumping from a high rise in a crowded city?”
The women stared blankly at her, and I cringed inside.
Gabi got up and moved to the window. “You can’t tell from standing here, but wind blows through these corridors between buildings.” Across the street were rows upon rows of other high-rise towers. She was right. Cities were their own valleys and conduits for high winds the higher up you got. “So, if I were to jump from the roof, my chute would be caught in a strong wind. At least, it’s likely that would happen. And since I’m just an office worker, I wouldn’t have any knowledge about how to actually fly my chute and stop myself from being slammed into one of those buildings there. Would you offer training courses? Would employees have to get certified?”
Bless Gabi and her sweet heart. She genuinely believed these women had answers for her questions.
They did not.
Jen finally found her voice. “The odds of surviving the jump are higher than surviving a fire or bombing situation.”
“Are they?” Gabi asked. Her tone was still so kind and warm, and her question was a valid one, but it made the sisters squirm.
Oof.
The sisters began packing up the chute and cramming it into the harness on Jess’s back. Gabi took her seat and looked at me with a confused expression.
“What did I do?” she whispered.
I rose smoothly to my feet as the sisters hurried toward the door. “Thank you for your time, ladies. I really appreciate it, and I appreciate your objective. Like I said, give me a few days to mull things over and I’ll be in touch. I have to find out if this is a viable product. Keep at it.”
They left in a hurry, and I turned to Gabi, who sat fidgeting with her hands in her lap.
“Did I screw things up?” she asked.
I chuckled. “No, quite the opposite. You posed questions they should have thought of in the first rounds of their invention. That thing is a death trap.”
“I thought I was missing something because I was thinking the same thing, and I couldn’t understand why they would come in here pitching that like it was a good idea.” Gabi shook her head. “If we ever used something like that, the city would be cleaning blood off thirty-story windows for weeks.”
“Window cleaners would get a well-deserved raise.”
“Ew,” she groaned.
We ran through a dozen more pitches throughout the morning and afternoon. Gabi operated like a well-oiled machine and traded out the breakfast food for finger sandwiches and vegetable platters around noon. She and I grazed all day long, and I had to admit, having the food and the coffee made the clients much more relaxed and made me more comfortable because I wasn’t going a full day without eating.
Funny how the little things could make such a difference.
Some pitches were as ludicrous as the parachute one. One man pitched a dog collar that connected to smart home security programs and unlocked all the doors when you brought your dog home from a walk. When asked if there were features built in to prevent someone from getting the collar and using it to break into your house, he stormed out, claiming Gabi and I weren’t seeing the whole picture.
It was common for people to leave my office in some sort of emotional way. They were passionate about their projects, and some of them had spent years on prototypes and designs for a moment like this. I hated raining on their parade, but I also refused to give them false hope. I handled things as delicately as I could, knowing how attached people were to their ideas—like an artist to their work—but it was inevitable that at least one person would leave hurt and offended.
Luckily, there weren’t many more of those.
There weren’t many excellent pitches, either. Only one stuck out in my mind, and when all the pitches were wrapped up from the day and it was half past six, I leaned back in my chair and watched Gabi wrap up the platter of finger sandwiches with saran wrap to put in the staff fridge in the kitchen for employees to eat tomorrow.
“Which one was your favorite?” I asked.
“That’s easy. The sneaker one.”
A dynamic duo of two best friends, both men in their early twenties, had come in with swagger and confidence to present their sneaker design. They didn’t have a name for their business, but they had a genius prototype of a mesh sneaker that was fully customizable with interchangeable laces, heel accessories, soles, and tongues. There were even tiny beads that could be clipped into the mesh that reminded me of fashion enamel pins. They explained that they believed their main demographic would be teens, which was why they wanted to keep the cost low, but from where I was sitting, with the right marketing team, they could target any age demographic they wanted.
“Why did you like it?” I asked.
Gabi pursed her lips. “Well, for starters, I love how customizable it is, and even more, I love that everything is made from recycled products. They’re thinking about the environment, and it saves overhead cost on their part, too. I like that it’s made here in the United States and that all their products are ethically sourced. It just felt like they were doing it right, you know?”