At a Silicon Valley startup, no one expects the receptionist to be part of the crisis response. But one Tuesday afternoon, that’s exactly what I became.
It started like any other day—badges not scanning, cold brew running out too fast, engineers arguing over whether the bug was “critical” or “just annoying.” Then suddenly, Slack went quiet. Too quiet. Screens froze. Someone shouted from the open floor: “The system’s down.”
Within minutes, panic rolled through the office. Investors were arriving in an hour. A demo was scheduled. The CTO was stuck in traffic. And somehow, every single person started at the same place—my desk.
I wasn’t fixing servers or writing code, but I did the only thing I could: I slowed things down. I rerouted visitors to a waiting area, offered water, quietly reassured a nervous candidate that “this happens sometimes.” I printed temporary schedules, coordinated with security, and even helped the HR lead track down the one engineer who knew how to restart the staging environment.
No one told me to do any of it. I just did what front desks in startups really are—control centers disguised as polite smiles.
What struck me later was how quickly titles stopped mattering. Founders, engineers, interns—we were all just people trying to keep something alive. When the systems finally came back online, there was no applause. Just relief, laughter, and someone saying, “We should’ve lost today.”
By evening, things were normal again. People went back to code. Investors left impressed. The crisis became a joke in Slack.
But I didn’t forget it.
That day taught me that startups don’t run on job descriptions. They run on people stepping up when there’s no playbook. And sometimes, the person holding everything together isn’t in a meeting room or on a call—it’s the one sitting at the desk everyone walks past.
And tomorrow? I’ll be back to badges and calendars.
But now I know—when things break, I’m already part of the fix.