Drayton and Mackenzie

For James, there was no sense that expanding Tesco’s sales onto the web was what the human race urgently needed. It didn’t have to be. This was a ladder. And yet: he’d come first in the most prestigious course at the most famous university in the world, and he was sitting here in his boxers copying and pasting the item code for ironing boards. It didn’t feel as if he were ascending to greatness.

It was insane that you had to pretend to be interested in your job and use these lame phrases like “pinging things over” “by close of play”.

James was twenty- seven and never had a boss again. Until that moment, he and Roland had lived as employees, as if in the warm, dark, cosy- fetid hold of a ship. What happened up at the helm was not their concern.