What I Called Intuition
He walked over on a Tuesday, the way he always does, with no ceremony, no announcement. Six years, he said. I didn’t realise. I’d been tracking his work all that time, and somehow the number had slipped past me.
We talked the way we usually do. There was mockery, some sarcasm, the kind of shorthand that builds between people who’ve spent real time together. And then, when the noise settled, he said something quietly.
He said he’d like to have his work reviewed. His time here, what he’d done, what it amounted to. And then, but I want it done by you.
I didn’t say much after that. I’m not someone who receives that kind of thing easily. When someone says it, I take it seriously, perhaps too seriously. I turn it over. I look for the place where I haven’t earned it.
What started turning in my head wasn’t the request. It was something older. A note I’d written three years ago, the day he left his second interview, before we’d offered him anything.
I have a habit I’ve never spoken about publicly. After an interview, when the conversation is done, and I’ve shaken someone’s hand, and they’ve walked out, I write down a single word or phrase. Not an evaluation of their potential. Not a summary of who they are. Just a notion, something I feel about where this person will go, what will propel them, what will hold them back.
It is a private test of my own intuition. I go back to it later, sometimes years later, and I measure what I wrote against what actually happened. Was I right? Was I off? I like to think my success rate has exceeded fifty per cent. I say this like it’s a good thing.
When I interviewed him twice before we made the offer, I felt something. I wrote it down. And what I wrote was, in essence, a ceiling. Something I believed he carried with him. Something I was certain, with the quiet confidence of someone who has done this long enough, he would never break through.
He was hired. The job he was walking into was harder than he knew. The description wasn’t complete, the tools weren’t in place, the team he needed wasn’t ready, and the expectations were not aligned. He didn’t know any of that. I did.
I kept him close, not as a favour, of course. It was my job. But I watched him closely because I wanted to see what happens when someone meets every obstacle a workspace can produce, and has to come through it without knowing it was designed that way.
What I watched over six years was this: a person whose foundation held.
His manners never left him. His honesty, at the moments when honesty was most costly, stayed intact. He treated every task as though it were personal, as though his name were on it in a way that couldn’t be removed. That dedication made him vulnerable, because when you put your heart into something, it is the first thing that gets bruised when reality changes around you. When circumstances shift, when other people intervene, when someone else’s carelessness undoes the work you did carefully.
He is linear. One problem, one solution, and he won’t stop until it is right. Not until it is done. Until it is right.
And he never shattered the ceiling I wrote down. He simply never needed to. He took what I had identified as a limitation and used it, built around it, and made it work in a direction I hadn’t imagined.
That is not what I predicted.
Once, I was monitoring a task. Something I’d volunteered to oversee after I heard a process could be improved. He was involved, along with someone else I hold in equally high regard.
The task, on the surface, was straightforward. A clear flow, a simple output. What was not visible was what lay underneath it: weeks, possibly months, of work that belonged to neither of their job descriptions. The work they had done! because they saw something that needed to be done. Work completed in the smallest detail, with a precision that takes discipline to maintain when no one is watching, no one is measuring, no one is expecting anything beyond the result.
I saw the macro of macros. The attention inside the attention. The kind of care that is only possible when a person believes the work itself is worth caring about, regardless of whether anyone will notice.
They probably do more in the shadows than they do under the sun. With the same restraint, the same standard, and no expectation of return.
عَنْ كُلَيْبٍ الْجَرْمِيِّ قَالَ: شَهِدْتُ مَعَ رَسُولِ اللَّهِ صلى الله عليه وسلم جِنَازَةً، فَلَمَّا قَعَدَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صلى الله عليه وسلم عَلَى الْقَبْرِ، جَعَلَ يَقُولُ لِلَّذِي يَحْفِرُ: “أَوْسِعْ مِنْ قِبَلِ الرَّأْسِ، أَوْسِعْ مِنْ قِبَلِ الرِّجْلَيْنِ”. فَلَمَّا خَرَجَ، قَالَ: “أَمَا إِنَّ هَذَا لَا يَنْفَعُ الْمَيِّتَ وَلَا يَضُرُّهُ، وَلَكِنْ يُقِرُّ بِعَيْنِ الْحَيِّ، وَإِنَّ اللَّهَ يُحِبُّ مِنَ الْعَبْدِ إِذَا عَمِلَ عَمَلًا أَنْ يُتْقِنَهُ”.
“This does not benefit the deceased, nor does it harm him. But it brings comfort to the living. And Allah loves that when a servant does a deed, he does it with excellence.”
The Prophet, peace be upon him, said this at a graveside, to a man digging. The dead man gains nothing from the extra space. And still: do it properly. Do it well. Not for the audience. Not for the outcome. Because Allah loves itqan, and itqan has no off switch.
{قَالَتْ إِحْدَاهُمَا يَا أَبَتِ اسْتَأْجِرْهُ ۖ إِنَّ خَيْرَ مَنِ اسْتَأْجَرْتَ الْقَوِيُّ الْأَمِينُ}
سورة القصص: [26]
“One of the two women said: Father, hire him. The best person you can hire is one who is strong and trustworthy.” (Al-Qasas: 26)
She said this to her sister after watching Prophet Musa’s work. Not after an interview, not after a reference check. After she saw what he did when he thought no one was measuring it.
That is the recommendation I witnessed. Twice over.
The note I wrote was not a prediction about him. I understand that now. It was a limit I had decided on, quietly, with the confidence of someone who has done this long enough to trust himself. I drew a line around what I believed he could become, and I called it intuition.
He never hit that line. He never needed to. He built his six years entirely outside the boundary I had set, in directions I hadn’t thought to map. That is not him proving me wrong. That is me discovering that the ceiling was mine.
And when he said he wanted the review done by me, what started turning wasn’t the request. It was the question underneath it. Had I been what that trust required? Not the professional part. I can account for that. The other part. The friend he expected. The guide he felt he’d earned. The mentor who should have known, earlier and more clearly, that the limit he was working against was something I had placed there, not something he carried in.
I want to say I did my best. I think I did. But I also know there is always room for more, and that is the particular difficulty of caring about someone’s growth and knowing when you’ve given enough. Knowing when enough is not the same as all that was needed. Accepting both of those things without letting one cancel the other out.
He asked me to review his employment years. I will. And when I sit down to do it, I’ll be reviewing something of mine as well.
The note I wrote after his interview. And the gap between what I was certain of then, and what I know now.
I was wrong about him.
I’m glad.
Keep creating
Thanks for reading Within the Margin of Error! I truly appreciate you taking the time to read my words. I hope I was able to bring you some value in exchange.