Friday was the last business day of the month and Kevin was on edge. It was his third week at EA Tech. Entertainment Acquisition Technical Enhanced Network, the global credit card company with headquarters situated in Southern California had also partnered with the leaders of cable, phone, hotel and restaurant industries to prompt consumers to spend as much of their money on entertainment. The company’s business slogan was ‘Acquire your Entertainment’.
As Kevin stared nervously at his computer, he was vividly aware that he was somewhat isolated in his cubicle. His thoughts turned to the several youthful employees that had been seated near him. In recent days, their numbers had simply dwindled. It was a mystery to him as to why that was. In fact, more than mysterious, it was very frustrating as he depended on their input for his on-the-job learning.
Still, getting a job at this company was highly sought after. It had huge benefits, awesome pay, and seemingly negligible turnover – at least he had never heard of anyone who left the company, granted it was rather new on the block, so to speak, and had taken the credit card industry by storm, skyrocketing after it’s IPO. It didn’t hurt that it was well known that the company recruited very attractive people on both sides of the spectrum.
--
Reflecting back to his start, Kevin had thought it was a strange company from the outset. He had spent the first few days at the company in orientation, where it seemed the company wanted to know everything about him, including his favorite food items and his workout routine. He found that strange and a bit invasive, but he neglected to voice such thoughts to the all female Human Resources employees that ran the orientation. He had been weighed and measured, with many photos taken, which would have been ok for an athlete-in-training, but not typically for an IT engineer, which was his occupation. When asked, they had said something about long term health of employees, healthy body= healthy mind, yada yada.
Another item he found strange was that all the new hires (and it was a substantial group at over thirty people) were young men, well dressed, professional and attractive. Most looked younger than him, this being his 2nd company in the field, and he was aged twenty-five.
At the end of orientation, the managers, all young, attractive women ranging in age from mid-twenties through early thirties, had then come in and taken turns selecting the various ‘talent’. Kevin felt like it was almost as though they had been in a draft, where all the managers selected a person and once they got to the end, the picking swung from back to front and vice versa. He didn’t know whether or not to feel honored when his manager, Andra Milker, picked him with her first selection. When the picking had completed, each manager had retreated to their respective departments with the new hires in tow – Andra had five new hires, including Kevin, whereas most of the managers had four.
As Kevin walked to his new technical job, he was instantly aware of how affable and attractive Andra was. Her mannerisms could be considered bordering on flirtation. There was much laughter, and gossip, and playful banter as she interacted with her new talent. As she escorted them to their new cubicles, all situated near each other, it was not uncommon for her to brush up against one of the men’s bodies, or lightly touch someone on the upper thigh or shoulder.
Andra was, simply put, a babe. In IT terms, where the percentage of attractive female professionals was notoriously low, that made her a goddess. Her curly brown hair, high cheekbones, emerald eyes, light tan, slim athletic build and cuteness of face and personality made her stand above even the other managers at the company, who were also unusually pretty. At 5'4", she bore a striking resemblance to Danica Patrick. She was also the youngest of the group of managers, being the same age as Kevin, twenty-five. Often, there was a breathless quality to her voice that would come out when she was being flirty or joking. Something about her just always seemed…fun. Even her attire had a casual, sporty nature to it. On top of that, she seemed to have a business savviness. There could be no doubt that she had obviously been fast-tracked into management and Kevin could see why.
A single man, there were multiple times a day when Kevin thought to himself as he surveilled her body or watched her speak, her vibrant persona spilling forth, What I wouldn’t give to become a permanent fixture in her life! He had become quickly enthralled by her.
On multiple occasions, he had sat next to her as she talked to the group of new hires in her office, whom she referred to as her ‘gang’. Sitting beside, he had found himself staring at her delectable mouth, listening to her speak, her voice delightful to his ears, but also entranced by the way her lips moved. However, fraternizing with your manager was very much frowned upon in the field and he had found out soon enough that she was, in fact,
already married. Therefore, Kevin contented himself with simply enjoying her presence and flirtations. For him, romance would have to come from other avenues.
--
For the most part, the first couple of weeks had gone well. He had begun to learn the system and been mentored briefly by a couple consultants on how to run the internal finance reports for the department.
Kevin felt he was on good terms with Andra, as they shared some common interests, particularly when it came to food and humor. For the last several days, he had typically began his day by checking in with her, going to her office and letting her know what he had worked on the previous day and what he intended to learn and work on for the current day. She seemed to encourage this.
This had abruptly changed starting on Wednesday, where her office had been closed from early in the morning on and she had been unavailable for most of the day. Kevin figured that she must simply be busy. Perhaps there were end-of-month items which required her attention.
There seemed to be a tension in the air, though Kevin was unsure what the origins of it might be.
To make matters worse, the consultant he was supposed to be shadowing that day, David, had not shown up to his cubicle. David and he were working on a new project together, assigned at the start of the week, with David being the senior technician. He was going to go over some of the project code as well as some additional reporting features with Kevin. David was highly looked upon by the company and had stayed on after many projects, acquiring lots of internal knowledge of the department’s systems.
Than Thursday afternoon rolled around and Andra had stopped by Kevin’s cubicle, asking him if he would run the weekly financial reports the next day. It had been Josh’s turn to run the report (the new hires had taken turns on a weekly basis), but Josh had mysteriously not come back to his desk after lunch. Kevin, attempting to look good in his manager’s eyes, had readily agreed to run the report, even though he had been assigned to a new project at the beginning of the week.
Later in the day, the project lead, a middle-aged woman name Helen, had swung by his desk and asked for a status, which Kevin gave her. He also let her know that he would be spending a portion of his time the next day working on the weekly financial reports, as Andra has asked him earlier. Helen shook her head as she walked away, apparently not happy with that information, though he could not be sure as he only saw the back of her head.
--
Switching to Kevin’s POV:
Finally, Friday arrived and Kevin was unnerved to find that not only had Josh and David not shown up to work, but that two other new hires had also not shown up. Perhaps there is a flu bug going around, he thought. At least Ravi, an Indian-American and the youngest new hire of the group and Kevin’s neighboring cube mate, was there, though he appeared to be too busy to even have any small talk.
It was mid-morning when Andra came to Kevin's desk and, as was her friendly and fun nature, sat on the side counter of Kevin’s cubicle desk, legs crossed Indian-style. She was wearing her typical fleece pullover and stretchy trousers, her feet bare as she had taken off her sandals first (did I mention she liked to dress casually). She wore a bright smile on her face as I turned my attention from my monitor towards her. I liked when she was like this – she seemed more akin to a teenage girl than my boss and it typically allowed me to drop my guard.
“So, Kev, how’s the report coming?”, she asked perkily. She liked to call me by my nickname when she wanted something or when we were gossiping casually on mornings before work and I accepted the greeting warmly.
“Oh, I haven’t started on it yet. How soon do you need it? It doesn’t usually take me too long to run it.”
A slight frown came over her face. “I need it this afternoon. I have a meeting with Tiffany this evening and since it’s month end, we’ll need those numbers. This report is a very big deal for her and she needs those numbers for future planning. I don’t want you waiting til the last minute on it.”
Tiffany was one of the department’s two directors as well as Andra’s boss.
“Oh shoot. I didn’t even think of that”, I said, feeling a nervous tingle go down my spine, adding, “I haven’t even been brought up to speed on how to run the month-end numbers.”
“What?! I thought that you and David already covered that?!”
I could see that Andra was clearly not pleased and I hated to give her any news that made her unhappy. “Uh…we…we were supposed to go over some things Wednesday, but David never showed up”, I stuttered, feeling a bit uncomfortable.
“Well, did you call him? Perhaps he worked from home that day?”
“Uh…no”, I replied, sheepishly. Theoretically, he being the more senior engineer, I thought he would be expected to be the more responsible one. I did feel somewhat guilty, regardless, since technically, I was the employee and he the consultant.
“Dammit Kevin”, she half-whispered, “I need you to take some initiative. Why don’t you go ahead and dig in to the code and see if you can figure it out. Is David in the office today?”
“Er…”, I peeked over the wall of my cube, straining my height on my tip-toes, “…I don’t think so. Haven’t seen him all morning or even heard anyone over there.”
Andra scrunched up one side of her face, lifting her lip on that side and wrinkling that side of her nose slightly. I couldn't describe why, but I always found it endearing when she did that, part of her fun personality. Not realizing I was staring, I found myself drawn to her mock sneer, finding a sensual sense of mystery behind those luscious lips.
Perhaps noticing my stare, she broke into a warm smile, showing off her pearly whites.
“Alright, well, if you need to, give him a call, but don’t wait too long. And let me know if you run into any obstacles. If you have to skip lunch, than go ahead and do so. Once you finish the reports, you can take off early. Here, go ahead and take this water.” Smiling, she handed me a bottle of water. “It’s very important to stay hydrated.”
“Thank you”, I said meekly.
"No. Thank YOU", she replied as she left
--
With a sense of urgency, I began scrambling through the report code, but I quickly became frustrated. I could see where the inputs and outputs for the month-end totals were coming from, but they were dynamically allocated linkages and one would need to have some knowledge of where the physical locations of these linkages resided. Without this knowledge, typically given by the systems expert and learned by other engineers through osmosis (aka, on the job training over time), I was not going to be able to find out the information by myself, no matter how much effort I put into it.
I immediately dialed David, trying repeatedly, but couldn’t get into contact with him. With time now becoming a factor, having looked through the code for over an hour, I walked over to Andra’s office only to find the door closed. I heard heated voices behind it and decided not to bother her during an apparent meeting.
Going back to my desk, I instant messaged her that I had indeed run into an obstacle, telling her that I needed someone with expert knowledge of the system. I explained I wouldn’t need too much of that person’s time; just a little knowledge transfer. She messaged me back that she was in meeting, but that she would get Jenny to come over to my desk. That made me relax a little. I liked Jenny a lot. She was pretty and a young go-getter who seemed to know her way around the system, although she’d only been with the company a little over a year.
--
In the meantime, I began looking at the programs for the project I was on.
It wasn’t too long before Helen stopped by.
“How’s things going newbie?” It was her typical greeting for me.
“Not too bad, Helen, I’m just looking through our program now.”
“Have you got it to produce data yet? I promised Doug (the project manager) that we’d have input into the business unit streams today”, she said, looking at me expectantly.
Sighing, I explained to her that most of my focus that day was in trying to get the financial reports run in Josh’s absence. I told her that I had run into a stumbling block because it required expertise I did not have. “It’s really not fair – I’m not even the one who’s supposed to be running reports this week and it’s eaten into my project time”, I complained.
“Don’t look at me”, she said, “I’m not the one you have to convince.” With a wink, she left.
I was happy that she had accepted my response for why I hadn’t made more progress on the project work, but I was a bit disturbed by her wink and lack of empathy for my plight. What did that mean?, I wondered.
I continued working on the code for a while longer, waiting for the reinforcements to come.
After a half hour, I received a call from Andra. “Can you come to my office?”
I didn’t detect any anger, so I wondered why she wanted me to come to her office. She didn’t even ask me for my status first.
--
She waited for me by her door, ushering me to a seat and then closing the door behind us as she sat down behind her thick mahogany desk. Her office was not large, at about 15 feet wide by 20 feet deep, A tall filing cabinet stood on one wall opposite her desk, with her desk pushed up against the other wall, leaving just a few feet for her to move around it. She had other smaller filing cabinets on her side of the desk. There were typically two spartan chairs on the visiting side of the desk, though a couple more could squeeze in if need be, and if it was a larger group, she would add a chair to her side.
It was really a utilitarian office, with a smaller desk with her computer near the back window which overlooked one portion of the large parking lot at three stories up. What I never quite understood was the plaster piping which came in from the ceiling and wound down to the side of her desk near the wall, continuing underneath it. I had meant to ask about these pipes (I'd seen them in other's offices as well), but I was certain this was not the time to do so.
I glanced briefly at the small bin of Laffy Taffy; the miniature dolphin figurine next to it made me smile.
For a couple moments, Andra didn’t say anything, just looked at me. It was awkward to say the least.
“Did you run the financial reports?”, she asked, matter-of-factly.
“Uh sure, Andra, here they are”, I said, my hands empty as I mimed handing her the invisible report. I was a bit perturbed now and let the situation get the better of me. I liked Andra and didn’t want to ruffle her feathers, so I continued, softening my tone “No, when I run the report, the month-end totals are the exact same as last month's. I don’t know the physical location of the input and output folders.”
“Can you say ‘looooser’?”, she said softly, elongating the word. Her eyes didn’t really seem to be viewing me, but looking through me rather. It was as if she had made her mind up about something and would live with the consequences.
“Well, I did as much as I could in looking through the code”, I explained.
“Excuses, excuses”, she muttered.
“I..I thought you were going to send Jenny over?”, I said, trying to switch gears to take a little heat off.
“Yeah, she was too busy to help out.” She kept looking at me for a few more moments, biting her lower lip.
“Hmmmpf, I was kinda hoping you’d be the one to make it. Looks like Ravi will be the one getting the promotion. Alright, I’m getting hungry and I still need to meet with my boss, so why don’t you go ahead and report to HR. I’ll go ahead and notify them you’re on your way. And Kevin”, she continued, as I had already reached her door, “don’t dawdle. We’ll worry about your stuff at your desk later. Right now, the only stuff I’m concerned with is you. So get your little behind down there pronto, kay.”
Geez, I thought as she closed her office door behind me, this had been the strangest and most humiliating day of my professional life. And what the heck do I care if she’s hungry now that I’m being let go?
--