The System Has Failed
The several months following the departure of my boss, Motorcycle IT Guy, were rather rough. The transition was made no easier by Head of HR who would have only been happy with my head on a pike in the lobby. Dan had moved back into the office and was keeping me busy with inane requests, such as restoring the sounds from XP on his now Windows 7 machine. This was made worse by the fact that I was on-call 24/7, and Dan had already made several late night calls. I was strung out, so much so that they couldn't keep the espresso in stock I was burning through it so fast. I knew I was coming up on an important juncture point, though. I had formally requested an assistant be hired, which HoHR immediately denied. Which was mildly inconvenient. What was more interesting, however, was the amount of HR Cronies that were roaming the halls near the dregs. HR had a nice departmental area, with windows.
"rstrt, Accounting has chosen the IT department to be audited this quarter." The insufferable one said (HoHR) "I hope there aren't any discrepancies, that would be a terminable offence you know."
"Have they? Well, when Money sends me the formals I'll make sure she gets our financials. Thanks for the heads up though, you know how swamped I've been." I said, winking at her. This made her scowl and turn on her heel. As she huffed down the hall, I put my nose into my coffee cup and breathed in deep.
It's time. I thought aloud, trying to calm what little nerves I had left at this point. I picked up the receiver and hit Redial. The line rang twice, and a woman answered.
"Hey, rstrt. What's up?"
"Money, operation Eaglebutt is a go."
"Seriously, you're calling it Eaglebutt?" she paused "You're such a little kid."
"That's part of my charm, yeah?" She laughed and we chatted for another moment or two before hanging up. It was nice to have a friend somewhere in the office still. The day went on with the usual myriad of issues, the next more mundane than the last, until finally my clock read 5. Unfortunately, the evenings were extremely short, being near the end of winter, and because of the added stress of my plan. The next day was the audit, where Money, CEO, HoHR and myself would all sit in a meeting room and discuss IT's budgetary future.
"rstrt, come in and sit down. Let's get started, shall we?" The CEO pointed to a chair, I was obligated to sit there. Unfortunately it put me in a closer proximity to HoHR than I would have liked. Though, the meeting room was in fact smaller than the distance to the sun.
"So I've gone over rstrt's financials in the last quarter. As you know, he took over for MITG half way through." Money handed out a report. I flipped through it as she talked. "Since he's started, IT costs have fallen by twenty percent. From a financial standpoint, he's doing more with less."
HoHR interrupted her, "How is that possible? Are you including the salary of him not wanting an assistant?"
"HoHR, let me interrupt you there. He had me on the email where he requested an assistant, and you denied him having one. Do you care to explain yourself?" CEO chimed in. I hadn't expected a visible sign of shock on HoHR's face, but she certainly showed it.
"We gave rstrt a significant pay raise since he took over director, we can't afford to give him an assistant." I tried to hide my smile. HoHR had played right into my hands.
"How is that, when you gave every one in your department a raise this past month?" Money shot back at her "Which equaled roughly the cost of an assistant for rstrt here."
HoHR shot me a look that could have killed. You could feel the hatred emanating from her, she knew she slipped. What made it worse for her, was that I caught her in it.
"rstrt gets an assistant, which he'll be responsible for hiring. Oh, and you can come to my office when this meeting is over. You and I have a lot to talk about, HoHR." CEO got up and thanked me for doing a good job then left the room. Money smiled at me and started to pack up as well, all the while HoHR sat there and brooded.
"Thanks again Money, I couldn't have done it without you." I handed her an envelope, gave her a smile and proceeded back to the dregs. I couldn't help but feel like I had actually won a major battle, but I knew that HoHR wasn't done yet. She would be even more vicious now that I've drawn blood. The traditional system had failed, and I had to resort to playing the same games that HoHR was so good at. I couldn't help but feel slightly cheapened by the whole thing. It didn't matter though, I had the green-light to get an assistant.
Even my scotch tasted foul. I had stooped to Head of HR's level (HoHR) when I bought Money's cooperation. Money had a particularly interesting entry in my Black File, seems she was skimming money from one of the sub-companies that operates under the $Company umbrella. I had to hand over my proof, or at least a copy of it, but she agreed to audit me. I had refrained from doing any major system upgrades to users while on my first quarter of being Director. It wasn't difficult to get costs down, Motorcycle IT Guy (MITG) wasn't the most frugal of people. That 20% was a legitimate reduction in cost, but I needed to make sure that I was the one audited.
(The following Monday) "Hey, I'm looking for rstrt?" Said the lanky kid in my doorway. He was probably six three, less than 200lbs, and looked like he just came out of highschool.
"You must be Skip. MITG told me that you were good, let's see just how good you are." I pointed at a system in my old work area. "You have twenty minutes, if you get that system to boot by then I'll give you a job."
"Um, okay I guess." The kid seemed unsure of himself. He went through the first couple steps of troubleshooting, looking to see if everything was connected and powered on. Two minutes in he grabbed the machine and took off the side panel and inspected the components. It didn't take him five minutes to find the capacitors that were blown, and to plug in the soldering iron on the bench. He went and found some of the spares in my parts bin and went about replacing the caps. I was impressed, less than 20 minutes from troubleshooting to booting, I doubted that I would have been so quick.
"Well done, Skip." I paused, his enthusiasm was refreshing. "Just one last question for you, since I assume MITG told you what to expect. What's the modus opperandi of $Company IT?"
"Trust no one."