We Made it to the top (with minimal complaining)

Like many other Bay Area tech workers, Nimbus and Rachel worked at a company that appropriated the rhetoric of political movements to sell stuff. Their first encounter was working on a firmographic database (Nimbus as engineer, Rachel as product manager) that they were promised would change the world of marketing technology forever. Nimbus was surprised by Rachel’s enthusiasm for a project that would widely be considered very boring. He even felt compelled to join her in the trenches and put in extra effort when Rachel spent a weekend diving into a “critical” spreadsheet. Rachel's first impression of Nimbus was that was he was insufferably arrogant, but her heart started to soften when he invited her to a Democratic Socialists of America event. There, he demonstrated that he knew the difference between a political revolution and a software revolution. And, he admitted to her that he *also* thought he was arrogant, showing her that maybe they did have something in common. They enjoyed working together so much that they found themselves drinking too many IPAs one evening after work and holding hands under the table. Although Rachel was dating someone else, a co-worker suggested she add Nimbus to a spreadsheet of back-up boyfriends. She adamantly refused, which was one of the bigger mistakes Rachel has ever made on a spreadsheet. Eventually, she corrected that mistake by inviting herself to one of Nimbus's board game nights in Oakland. It was her turn to be surprised when instead of driving her to BART at the end of the evening, Nimbus offered to drive her all the way back to San Francisco, saying it was "basically the same amount of time." She knew he was better at math than that, and the rest is history.