Twitterpated (17 page)

Chapter 27

I
’D HAD AT LEAST THREE
dozen Primary lessons in my childhood about speaking kind words to and about others, and now karma had shown up to have its way with me. It was all my fault for branding Craig a snitch. I should have just kept my mouth shut and said only nice things. Then maybe karma would have passed me by to go mess with some other name-calling dummy.

“What are you going to do?” Katie asked, standing as still as possible in the doorway.

I breathed in and breathed out, searching for a cool and professional reaction to this emerging disaster. “I’m going to fix it, that’s what,” I said.

“Oh.” She shrank farther back through the doorway and glanced over her shoulder to the pod, where Mike sat with his head out of sight. Smart guy. At least he’d gotten that part right. His mistake had cost me big. But I knew part of this was my fault—I’d missed the data obfuscation because I’d been so distracted lately.

Data obfuscation
referred to the practice of deriving test data from real data, only with everything slightly tweaked. It showed salaries as several percentages higher than the reality and changed people’s birth years, for example. That allowed the database guys to give data to employees who weren’t cleared to access sensitive salary or personnel information so they could test new accounting modules. Mike had acted as a guinea pig six months ago for a software redesign and had a good relationship with the database administrators, so he volunteered to use his connections to help us avoid the normal three-day waiting period on data requests. But he forgot to explain to them that he needed real data instead of test numbers. We’d been angling for an edge over Craig, but getting the tweaked data had wiped out our advantage completely.

“What can I do to help you fix it?” Katie asked. I detected a faint tremor when she squeaked out the word
fix
.

“Calm down, Katie. I’m not the Dragon Queen. No one’s getting hurt,” I said. The Dragon Queen had reigned over Craig’s team before his promotion. During the last tax season, she’d suffered some sort of psychotic break. According to Sandy’s sources, the rumor circulated for a while that Craig had provoked the episode, but no one knew exactly what had happened. In any case, that’s when Craig made manager.

Struggling to regain control, I flipped my chair away from Katie and stared out at the parking lot. I counted and divided the cars by color, using the task to keep a cap on my temper. After establishing there were thirteen silver cars, nine white ones, eight beige, eight black, three red, and seven total of the rest combined, I turned to face Katie again.

“Bring me Mike,” I directed her.

“He didn’t know, Jessie. I—”

“That’s painfully clear. Send him in,” I said.

She didn’t dare argue. I watched her hustle to the cubicle divider hiding him and whisper something over the edge. Mike’s head rose a few inches above the divider, and his big, sorrowful eyes met mine. I crooked a finger and beckoned him to come.

He shuffled into my office, gaze now on the floor.

“Sorry,” he said.

“I’m sure you are,” I responded. “But that won’t make this go away.”

Even as I watched him flinch, amusement bubbled up. He looked genuinely worried, and I’m sure he expected to be fired. Lucky for him, I liked him. Besides, Sandy would probably kill me if I made extra paperwork for her. I had a different plan for my shaking associate.

“Do you have any idea what a headache you’ve caused here?” I demanded.

“Yes?” At the sight of my raised eyebrow, he choked out a more convincing, “I mean, yes.”

“Are you sure? Because it’s Wednesday, and that changes everything.”

He looked confused.

I stood up and wandered back to the window, waving him to the vacant seat opposite my desk. Psychological height advantage again.

“This is an important Wednesday. I’ve put in over twelve hours of overtime already this week so I could leave on time today. And now I can’t. Why is that, Mike?”

“Because I screwed up.”

“That’s it exactly. You probably think you’re here to get fired,” I continued and ignored the hope in his eyes at the word
probably
. I turned to face him. “I’m not going to do that because part of this is my fault too.”

He started to object, but I forestalled him with an upheld hand. “I should have noticed your error before now.”

He looked nervous now instead of scared. With firing off the table, I could see him scrambling to figure out his consequence.

“First of all, we’re going to have to work a lot of unpaid overtime through the weekend to get this straightened out,” I informed him. “Since you’re the only one I can legally compel to stay, you’re going to have to find a way to persuade the rest of the team to stay with us by using bribery. Start with Katie. She hates making copies, and I’m sure she won’t mind handing that job off to you for a couple weeks.”

He swallowed. “I can definitely make copies.”

“Lauren likes chocolate.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Peter would love to get into a Seahawks game. Or three. You have season tickets, right?”

“But—” his protest died on his lips. “Yes.”

“Go start making this right. We’re going to need everyone if we want to straighten this out by next week.”

“I’m on it.” He jumped up to leave, ready to grovel, then paused and walked back to my desk.

“I screwed up big. I’m sorry. I should have been looking more closely at the report. I assumed I got the right data.”

“You got exactly the data you asked for, Mike. The problem isn’t with the database administrator. You asked for the wrong thing.”

He hung his head. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’ll buy all the stay-late dinners?”

“At least,” I said. But I let a teasing note creep in so he knew he was making his way back to solid ground. When he looked up with a tentative smile, I smiled back.

“I promise I’ll triple check everything from now on,” he said.

“You do that,” I said. “In the meantime, you’d better go smooth talk your team. This will take a couple of days to untangle.”

“I’ll get right on it.”

I waved him out and watched as he hurried over to Katie’s desk, knowing she would be the easiest to convince to kick in some free overtime.

I took my seat again with a sigh and picked up the telltale requisition sheet. Although Mike’s mistake had been innocent, it had cost us big time. One stupid sentence had undone almost a week of work and put us dangerously behind on our timeline. And I hadn’t caught the problem until Katie’s salary showed up much higher than it should have. With our report due to Dennis in barely more than a week, this was a nightmare.

I could go to Dennis and get an extension, but that posed two problems: First, Craig would be ready on time, making me look like a slacker. And second, my pathological refusal to fail wouldn’t let me. I fought the urge to thump my head against the desk again, instead unwrapping a consolation piece of chocolate. Mike reappeared in my door, excitement chasing away the sad puppy look he’d worn all morning.

“This might not be so bad,” he said. “Or at least it’s equally bad for everyone, which is sort of the same thing if you think about it the right way. Kind of.”

I put my chocolate down and stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Well, I did something last week that I thought you might not like, but now I think it’s going to be fantastic for us!” he said.

“Keep going.”

“I mentioned to Brad that I had a connection on the data, and he mentioned it to Craig, who called me and asked me if I wouldn’t mind requesting his data too. And since I didn’t want to get on his bad side, I did. Which means he’s as far behind as we are, only he doesn’t know it yet. And if we don’t tell him, he’s going to blow it big time next week when he presents.” He broke off his explanation and finally took a breath, looking pleased.

Popping the unwrapped chocolate into my mouth, my inner Evil Jessie leaned back for a moment to savor both the candy and the image of Craig’s total humiliation if we neglected to warn him.

Way too soon though, I found myself choosing the right. Grrr. I just couldn’t dig a pit for my neighbor. With regret, I said good-bye to the mental picture of a red-faced and furious Craig and shoved back to go face the man in person.

“Where are you going?” Mike asked.

“I have to tell Craig what’s going on,” I said. “In the end, it only hurts the company’s bottom line if we let him spend any more time chasing the wrong data. It’s only fair.”

“But—”

“Two wrongs don’t make a right, blah blah blah.” I sighed and stood.

“I’ll do it,” he said. “It was my mistake.”

“No, you keep working on your bribes. We’re going to need all the help we can get to fix this. I’ll handle Craig.”

He nodded and scurried back to the pod. I headed for Craig’s office, irritated with my conscience but unable to stifle it. When I knocked and poked my head around his door, he looked surprised and then annoyed. Conjuring his plastic smile, he said, “Jessie. Nice to see you.”

Yeah right.

“Sorry it’s not a social visit, but I need to give you a heads up.”

“Really?” he drawled. A calculating gleam flashed in his eye. “Have a seat.”

“No, that’s fine. I’ll only be a minute,” I said, but I stepped all the way into the office and closed the door behind me. His expression grew even more curious.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Mike tells me you went through him for a data request last week,” I said.

“Is that a problem? I assumed you wouldn’t mind pooling resources.”

“Of course not.” Then again, with Craig, that meant a pool of my resources he could dip into anytime he wanted without returning the favor. But that was beside the point. “But I think our pool might have been tainted,” I confessed.

“That sounds bad.”

“It is. Mike’s connection sent you obfuscated data instead of listing actual salary.” I waited for the slow climb of red to his forehead that usually indicated his anger. Instead, I watched a satisfied smile creep over his face.

“I know,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

He shrugged. “I noticed last Thursday that my own salary was way off, so I checked around and realized I had a test report. So I got the real one.” His smug smile set my teeth on edge. His next words dripped with insincerity. “I hope you guys haven’t spent the last week working with the wrong numbers. That would be such a waste.”

My temper flared with frightening intensity, but I kept it on a leash. I couldn’t believe he had let us charge ahead on misinformation while he sat back and cackled. But I came to Craig’s office to do the right thing, and I wouldn’t let him bait me with his blatant mean-spiritedness.

“I’m glad you caught the error,” I said. I’m sure he was waiting for me to accuse him of costing our end of the project precious time, but I didn’t feel like giving him the satisfaction. At the door I turned to say, “I look forward to seeing your report next week. If you guys have found the same kind of savings we have, Dennis is going to be ecstatic.”

I shut the door behind me, noting his confusion with grim pleasure. I had neither confirmed nor denied that we had wasted a week with the wrong information. Now he’d be left to wonder until my presentation what his silence had cost us.

I hoofed it back to my office for more chocolate. Deciding I needed the big guns, I dug into the back of my pencil drawer and pulled out my king-size Hershey bar with almonds. The first half served as a great movie refreshment while I played a single loop of film in my mind: me beating Craig about the head with a sheaf of the wrong data while throngs of wronged coworkers cheered. The second half of the Hershey bar was for courage: I had to call Ben up to cancel for that night and several nights after.

Man, did I not want to make that call.

Chapter 28

M
Y TOES CURLED WHEN
B
EN’S
warm, “Hi, Jess,” came over the line.

“Hey, yourself,” I answered back. “Having a good day so far?” For once, I desperately searched for small talk to procrastinate coming to the point.

“Not bad,” he answered. “Looking forward to tonight is making it go faster though.”

Darn it. No reprieve.

“Right. Tonight . . .”

“Uh-oh,” he said. “I don’t like how that sounds.”

“I don’t either. I’m sorry, Ben, but I have to cancel. Something came up here, and I need to handle it.”

Silence.

I wondered if the call had dropped. “Ben?”

“Yeah. I’m here.”

“Oh.”

More silence.

Finally, at about thirty seconds way past awkward, Ben cleared his throat. “I guess this must be a pretty big something,” he said.

“It is. We had a huge glitch in our project, and I’m going to have to pull everyone in for major overtime to get this straightened out by next week.” I injected my explanation with the most apologetic tone I could.

“So how long is this going to take to fix?”

I couldn’t read anything in his voice.

“It’s hard to say. It depends on how much overtime my team is willing to give me. It will be at least through the weekend,” I said.

“I see.” He fell silent again, but I didn’t hurry to fill in the gap. I didn’t know what to say.

“Okay. You gotta do what you gotta do, right?”

“Right,” I said. “Was that a real okay?”

“No.” He sighed. “This totally stinks, and I don’t understand, but I’m trying not to whine.”

“I know. I’m so, so sorry. It’s Craig and a stupid clerical error . . . and now it’s getting ugly.”

“Craig again? Maybe I could beat him up for you,” he offered.

“You shouldn’t tempt me like that,” I said.

“All right, but I would even put on my shining armor and find a horse.”

“I appreciate the offer, but Craig is more of a fly who needs swatting than a monster.”

“Are you sure about that? Because if he’s behind this crisis, I kind of think slaying him wouldn’t be that bad.”

I laughed. “Unfortunately, he’s only a contributing factor. This is a multilayered mess.”

“I’ll let the offer stand,” he said.

“I appreciate it. Maybe I could call you when I need a brain break from the craziness around here.”

“You mean squeeze me in when you’re not too busy?”

I wrinkled my nose. “I guess that didn’t come out right.”

“Maybe not, but it’s what you meant. And as much as I don’t want to be just a convenience in your life, I’ll take what I can get.” He hesitated. “You should take care of business, Jessie. I know it’s important to you. But maybe . . . don’t take too long, all right? I’m trying hard to be patient, but it bums me out not to spend time with you again.”

I settled on, “I understand.” And then I felt stupid as the words hung out there, an unfinished thought. “I’m sorry again for canceling tonight. I was looking forward to it. I’ll blow through this project as fast as I can, but it’s gnarly, and it’s going to take time.”

“I get it. I’ve been there, done that,” he said.

“I’ll call, Ben. As soon as I’m done.”

“I’ll answer.”

We said our good-byes and hung up, but I kept the phone in my hand and sat staring at it for a while. Ben deserved more than my leftover time and energy, but I had no idea how to fix this current mess without giving it my all.

I found myself tapping out a text message.
I really am sorry.

It’s okay. I’m patient. Kind of.

I guess that’s all I can ask,
I sent back.

Wrong guess. But it’ll do for now
.

Huh? I saved the message, not quite sure what it meant, and then reread it several times, puzzling through his cryptic remark. Wrong guess? What did that mean? That I
should
ask him for more?

* * *

I dragged through Thursday and Friday with the energy and enthusiasm of a summer school student repeating algebra for the third time. I showed up, I did my work, but I didn’t have to like it. Even the friendly bickering between my workmates during our pizza-fueled late night sessions lacked entertainment value. I doubted anyone noticed since I laughed along with the others, but I felt like my laughs were the equivalent of verbal golf claps.

Since most of the people on my team were working their first post-college jobs, Mike convinced all but two to commit the extra time. The two who didn’t stay after both had small kids at home, and no one blamed them for clocking out at the end of their eight-hour workday. But the three other employees besides Katie and Mike were content to put in the time for free as long as Mike picked up the bill at the bar afterward. I had overlooked a couple of morning “headaches” bearing a striking resemblance to hangovers in light of their hard work. As long as their job performance stayed sharp, I wasn’t going to stir up trouble. Sandy had once told me a hangover versus a headache was hard to prove anyway as far as personnel issues went.

Saturday morning dawned with anemic sunlight filtering through my window, but it was more than I’d seen in a week. I wanted so badly to get out in it and bike around the nearby lake or wander through an outdoor market. Stupid work. Even bribery couldn’t induce most of the team to give up their Friday night
and
Saturday, so today it would only be Katie, Mike, and me.

I schlepped into my office right before nine, but neither of them had arrived yet. I busied myself getting the proper spreadsheets sorted for the next fifteen minutes until Mike showed up. I greeted him and asked about Katie.

“She’s not coming. She said it’s either take the weekend off or she’ll quit in defense of her mental health. Should we get started?” he asked, a notable lack of enthusiasm in his voice.

I felt his pain. “Yeah. We’ll make shred and copy piles for Katie and hope she doesn’t kill us on Monday,” I said.

“Do you find it at all ironic that we’re spending massive amounts of overtime trying to figure out how to get departments to trim their payroll budgets?”

“No, because we’re not getting paid for this overtime, thanks to someone in this room who isn’t me.” I gave him the stink eye.

“Right. So like I was saying, I’m glad we have such a great work rapport that we can devote every last spare second of our free time to fun projects like this,” he said.

“That’s what I thought I heard.”

For the next three hours, we worked with minimal conversation beyond occasional requests for documents from the other person. The silence grew too loud after the first hour, so I hooked my iPod into my computer speakers and let The Aggrolites fill in the blanks. When the minute hand dragged itself past noon, I called for a break.

Even working efficiently and producing a massive stack of audited documents for Katie to shred, we had barely made a dent in the work we had left. I dipped into my energy reserves and found them empty. The deserted Macrosystems office spread outward, a sea of gray cubicles.

“I don’t want to be here anymore.”

Mike turned down the speakers. “What?”

I looked at him. “I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t think I’m going to be good for much more today, even after lunch.”

He nodded. “I hate to say it, but me neither.”

“So should we bag it and get out of here?”

He grinned. “Try to keep up!” And he hustled to sort the last of our work into the shred or copy files.

When we had everything separated, he grabbed his water bottle and waved it jauntily at me on his way out of the door. I eyed the phone. Suddenly, I had half a day of nothing to do. If I was a very, very lucky girl, I would find Ben equally available.

I punched in his number.