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"Not that I'm complaining," Joanna qualified, "but why lunch?"
"I have a secret to tell you," her boss said with a gleeful smile. "I couldn't tell you at work. Abracadabra made me an offer. I'm changing jobs!" The waiter approached, preventing Joanna from blurting out all her questions. "I don't know what I'm getting yet. You go first, Joanna."
"I'll have the chicken pad thai, medium spicy," ordered Joanna, handing her menu to the waiter.
"Screw the zone today. I'm celebrating with carbohydrates. If you can order noodles, I'm getting fried rice. Vegetarian. Extra spicy. And can I have some green tea? Might as well do something right, I suppose."
"Just water for me," added Joanna.
"Hot food sure makes it easy to drink all the water the magazine articles tell us we should," commented Kathryn. After the waiter had left, she continued, "I want you to come with me, but it will take a few weeks to get everything settled. Let me tell you about it before you decide."
Kathryn paused to sip her soup, and Joanna jumped in with, "Congratulations! Tell me about the job." It was easier to talk to Kathryn during lunch. Joanna could get a word in once in a while when Kathryn stopped to eat. When they chatted in Kathryn's office, Joanna felt overwhelmed by Kathryn's rapid-fire delivery.
Kathryn replied, "It's in Seattle. I don't have to rush to sell my place, since the commute is doable, although I will move eventually. It's a project manager position with about the same number of reports I have now to start, but much more growth, a greater challenge. Best of all, it's an Internet company." She paused to take a bite.
Joanna asked, "Aren't you worried about whether they will survive?"
Kathryn shrugged. "It'll be great for my resume. Everett is too small. It has never been big, and it's always been dominated by one company. Since they moved their headquarters, the local economy isn't growing much. I know more and more people who have to commute to Seattle to find decent jobs. It's hard to switch companies here, and you know how slow our employer is to promote anyone. In Seattle, if I need to look for work, I can try there or the east side of the lake." She was eating faster than she usually did. Joanna frowned slightly, wondering if she should eat faster, or bring half back to her desk to eat later. Kathryn said, "Your friend Lisa's considering an offer there, so I'm sure you've talked, or at least listened to her ramble. I won't bore you with the details of how different the culture is there." Kathryn gulped another bite. "Oh, and I'd love it if you stayed the rest of the hour here to finish your lunch. I'll pay on my way out and expense it. I need to make some phone calls and I'd rather none of the office gossips knew."
She paused briefly, but while Joanna was trying to decide whether she dared ask about pay scale, Kathryn said, "I know you are much too polite to ask, but despite their reputation for below-market pay scales, they are more than matching my current salary. The long hours will make the commute a little less bad, at the total loss of any non-work-related social life." She shrugged and took another bite. "It'll be better once I move. I won't get another house; a condo will be much easier to deal with. I may just rent for a couple of years to see how it all turns out. It's definitely a life sacrifice for career purposes, but honestly, after Leo left, I just haven't had the heart to date around. You," she gestured with her fork, "might meet people once, that is, if you switch. You won't be able to hide out at home as much, or whatever it is you do in the evenings."
She wolfed the last of her food. Folding her napkin, she gulped her water. "The heat sure catches up, doesn't it? Anyway, think about it. We'll talk later about what kind of position you want. I think you should go lateral over to the technical side. You get that stuff."
Kathryn darted off, waving her company credit card at a waiter, leaving Joanna just enough time to say, "Bye!"
Joanna picked at her lunch. Kathryn's news shouldn't surprise her. If Joanna had thought about it, she reflected, she might have expected this. Kathryn had taken a lot of phone calls with the door closed lately. The company they worked for, Taille Electronics, was slow to promote the young or the female. While they were both good at their jobs, their advancement within Taille was nearing, if not already at, an end. Joanna might suck it up and slog through, but Kathryn wouldn't. They might both be smart. They might both work hard. But if success was about who you knew, Kathryn was bound to succeed, and Joanna doomed, at best, to tag along. Some days she envied Kathryn's easy assertiveness, but most of the time Joanna figured her small town background gave her a better set of priorities than Kathryn's Chicago upbringing.
A few days ago, Lisa had bought Joanna dinner at a seafood restaurant on the Seattle waterfront. Lisa never wanted to drive up to Everett, but when Joanna was willing to come down to Seattle, she was guaranteed a meal. In the first few years after college, it had usually been cheap Vietnamese or Thai food. Lately, though, Lisa had been going upscale, and Joanna had been enjoying the results.
As usual, Lisa had yet another in an endless stream of job offers. Lisa had heard rumors about Abracadabra already: disgruntled temporary workers called it as a sweatshop, programmers and managers wore two pagers and a non-optional cellphone. Those rumors were the sticking point for Lisa. She had a wide circle of friends and interests. While working for Abracadabra would be exciting and a fantastic bullet point for her resume, she worried about balancing life and career under those additional pressures.
Joanna had asked Lisa, "If you didn't want to work there, why did you apply?" She'd often wondered how Lisa got the time to seek out and apply for all those opportunities.
Joanna vividly recalled the stunned look on her friend's face: "But I didn't apply. I know two people at Abracadabra: a woman I knew from my last job, and a guy who just left the consulting firm I'm working for now. They're trying to recruit me. Doesn't that happen to you?" Joanna had shaken her head no, and Lisa had launched into a lecture that started with, "That's right. You've been at that place in Everett since we graduated," went right through, "Surely someone at that company has moved on," and "You should try harder to connect with the people you work with," and ended with an exasperated explanation of how headhunters could be a workable substitute for on-the-job career-oriented networking. Joanna had asked what a headhunter was, and received for her trouble a napkin with several names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of recruiting agencies with the cautionary comment that she should ask each person if someone else at the agency would be better suited to recruit for a technical management position. Hanging out with Lisa might be hard on the ego, but Joanna always picked up some new and useful idea or information.
She remembered once commenting to Lisa that most people were just naturally better at socializing than she was, thinking at the time that it was like a talent for math, or baseball, or anything else. She should have expected Lisa's emphatic denial. Lisa was convinced that there was no such thing as natural ability at anything. It was all learned, just some things were learned while very young, and if you missed out, you had to put forth extra effort. She'd gone immediately from that rant to nagging Joanna once again to make more of an effort to get to know people, to talk about herself, to let people know who she was instead of just always listening and nodding and being nice.
Joanna, of course, had listened and nodded, and felt vaguely irritated, but not enough to argue with Lisa.
Looking back, Joanna realized that Kathryn was the first person she'd connected with through a job. She had met all of her friends either in college, or through other friends. Now that Kathryn was moving on, she was offering to take Joanna with her. Maybe she wasn't bad at this networking thing after all.
She set her napkin beside her plate, collected her purse and jacket. As she walked back to work, she resolved to call the numbers Lisa had given her. Better to have an idea of what was out there before following Kathryn to another city and a life as hectic as it would be different. She tried to think of good questions to ask recruiters.
As Joanna approached her office, she heard people arguing. Some of her determination left her as she realized she wouldn't be making any of those calls until she cleared her office. One voice belonged to Christene, one of her better, if difficult, programmers. Did those two traits always go together? The other voice belonged to Anthony, who was either the dimmest marketer Taille had, or just plain mean. Joanna was never sure which. Did a high-tech company exist that didn't remind its employees constantly of Dilbert? She paused outside, unwilling to go in and face them.
"What is it with programmers?" whined Anthony in a nasal tone that grated on Joanna's nerves. "You never implement the features we want the way we want them."
Joanna shuddered briefly, thinking what their products would be like if they did implement features as proposed by marketing. She felt anger in sympathy with Christene. Joanna was going to have to go in and stop this. Human Resources had pages of notes in Anthony's file reprimanding him for creating a hostile work environment, yet hadn't taken action. But if Christene landed a punch, she'd be out the door in minutes.
"I've told you a dozen times, Anthony," said Christene, her volume escalating with her frustration. "If we do it your way, it'll take forever. We license that part of the code, and we have to have the changes okayed by the vendor before we can release anything to customers. If we do it my way, and document it thoroughly, the few customers who need the feature will be able to find it, and we can get a patch out in a few days."
"I think if you were a good programmer, you'd be able to make it look the same to customers whether you changed it in our code or their code. But," Anthony condescended, "I shouldn't be surprised. Women are too emotional to be good programmers, and furthermore --"
Joanna's anger abruptly turned to cold fury. She stepped around the corner into her office. "I don't recall a scheduled meeting in this office," she interrupted Anthony. She looked at him pointedly. Anthony's jaw dropped slackly open. Keeping her face stern, but smiling inwardly, she realized that for once, she'd shocked him.
Christene recovered first. "I came to talk to you, but he was here." She glared at Anthony.
Joanna responded, "Christene, I'll come talk to you in a few minutes, after I've dealt with Anthony." Christene set her mouth, but turned and left.
Joanna turned to Anthony. What to tell the marketroid to make him go away? Marketroid? Why was she thinking of him in these terms? Kathryn and Lisa were right. She should manage a more technical group. At least when her programmers were rude to her she could make sense of their actions. It wasn't that she didn't understand the purpose of marketing. She'd spent more class hours in school studying it than computers. But something about the kind of person that became a marketer grated on Joanna's nerves.
Rather than reiterate Christene's arguments, Joanna observed, "I received some research from within your department that indicates this feature will only be used by two of our major customers, and a handful of minor ones. I have the names of the companies, if you'd like to look at them."
Surprised, Anthony asked, "I haven't seen that list. Where did you get it?"
Joanna replied, "Since you hadn't had a chance to get it from your research team, I thought I'd save you the trouble and get it myself."
Anthony persisted, "Who gave them to you?"
On another day, Joanna might have told him. Today, she was too angry to give Anthony any concession. She evaded his question. "I don't recall the name. I sent e-mail to the team, and someone replied. I saved the information to my file, but deleted the e-mail. You could ask around. I'm sure they'd be happy to let you know." That ought to throw him off, she thought with satisfaction. They both knew his rapport with his staff was so bad that at least one person had quit Taille to avoid being transferred onto his team. While Anthony was still trying to work out whether that was flattery or a dig, Joanna maneuvered him out of her office. "Let's get together next week," Joanna suggested. "You, me, a representative from your research team, a representative from my programmers. We'll all meet at 4 p.m. one week from today and make a decision then." Anthony backed out of the office, still frowning. For once, Joanna didn't care how Anthony felt. She was just glad to get rid of him.
She shook some of the tension out of her shoulders and arms as she walked over to her desk. She dreaded that meeting, but it had seemed the most effective way to get Anthony out of her office without further trouble. At least the meeting was late enough in the afternoon that she could be sure it wouldn't last more than an hour. No one stayed at Taille after 5 p.m., especially on a Friday. That had always been one of Joanna's justifications for staying at her increasingly dead-end, if well-paid, position. But what did she have to look forward to after work? An hour at the gym, a solitary dinner and, if the weather was good and she was feeling adventurous, a few laps in the pool followed by a soak in the hot tub, probably populated against the rules by a bunch of unattended, screaming children.
She turned to her computer. As she scheduled the meeting, she read a rambling e-mail from Christene, whose paranoia had outrun her common sense. She had assumed that Joanna would side with another manager. The martyred tone exhausted Joanna's patience. She picked up the phone and punched in Christene's extension. Slightly detached, she noticed her fingers were trembling. Even that small confrontation had gotten her adrenaline up. Joanna took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She wasn't going to die. Some risks might improve her life.
Christene picked up on the second ring. Without waiting to hear Joanna's voice, Christene immediately asked, "Did you read my e-mail?"
Joanna replied, "Yes," and overrode Christene's attempt to continue by adding, "and I've decided we should implement your version of the feature."
That silenced Christene for a long moment before asking, "Did you get Anthony to agree to that?"
Joanna chuckled. "Of course not, so don't tell anyone you're working on it. But if we'd done it when you first suggested the idea two weeks ago, the customers would have a patch by now. I'll scout around the technical writers and see if I can get the documentation done while you're working on the code. Maybe if we present marketing with a fait accompli, Anthony will retroactively decide he okayed it up front."
Christene asked, "Do you think so? That'd be great. And I'll be working on a real skunk works project. Can we call this the Black Project?"
Joanna replied, "Christene, it's not a project. You said yourself it's a minor extension to an existing feature and that's why this version is easy to add when the other one is hard. And it's hardly skunk works when technical writing, QA and marketing already know about the proposal." Besides, Joanna thought to herself, everyone involved bathes regularly. Real skunk works involved people who never go outside during daylight hours and have minimal social skills, a situation exacerbated by the fact that no one requires them to adhere to any of the normal rules governing polite society and a normal corporation in the US. Christene might like the cachet, the suggestion of computer-guru-dom that went with clandestine projects, but Joanna had heard enough stories from Lisa to feel no attraction.
Christene protested, "They didn't approve it, did they? We're top secret!"
Joanna was alarmed at how happy Christene sounded at the idea of working on something clandestine. Joanna tried to downplay it, saying, "Yeah, we're secret. Just make sure you pad out your daily and weekly progress reports with your other work. We wouldn't want to tip our hand too soon."
Christene, "Oh, good point. Shall I send you two copies, the real one, and the one you pass up the line to your boss?" She still sounded giddy with excitement.
Joanna hadn't thought that far ahead. Not a bad idea, although ethically questionable, like keeping duplicate sets of books. On the other hand, if it helped Christene maintain enthusiasm for the project, where was the harm? "Good thinking, Christene. Keep me up to date on your progress. If it turns out this implementation is harder than you thought, we'll just pretend it never happened."
"Great idea! Like you always say, my scheduling can get a bit aggressive," Christene said with a laugh. "Thanks a ton, Joanna. Bye!"
Joanna could hardly believe it. A napkin with a bunch of numbers and a none-too-definite job prospect at a company she'd probably hate working for and suddenly she was taking major risks with her current job. Okay, minor risks. The economy had been great the last few years, even if it was softening up a little now. The high-tech industry was always looking for new people to hire. The Puget Sound area would probably weather a recession better than most places. If it didn't, she could easily relocate. She hated her apartment. Most of her close friends were in another city. She hadn't been on a date in longer than she cared to remember. She socked away a large chunk of her paycheck every month; nothing was as easy to move as cold, hard cash.
No one ever got fired from Taille anyway. They just waited for the next economic downturn and laid off the undesirables. She didn't report to Anthony, and he wasn't anywhere in the organization chart above her. Joanna reminded herself that just because it felt insubordinate, didn't make it so.
Furthermore, she mused, she had several weeks of accrued vacation time she'd never taken despite Kathryn's repeated suggestion that she should. A quick look at the intranet page for employee benefits told her she had over two months of accumulated vacation time. At Taille, vacation days never went away even if you took forever to use them, and every other year, you received an additional week of vacation, up to four months of vacation per year. Not that she was close to that.
She'd never traveled much on her own. She'd gone straight from high school, to college, to Taille. Her only family, her parents, were healthy, halfway across the country and having tons of fun in an empty nest. Somehow, when her friends ran away to Acapulco for a week, they never thought to invite her.
Joanna shook herself out of her depressing reverie about unused vacation, missed opportunities and the feeling that her life was slowly eroding in the most boring way imaginable.
If by some bizarre twist of fate, human resources laid her off after Kathryn left, and before the job in Seattle came through, she could go to Europe, or eat her way across Southeast Asia. She'd think of something. When she stopped to think about it, she ought to be taking more risks. She might never have as good an opportunity.
Unfortunately, if she was planning on taking the job in Seattle, she shouldn't get a new apartment in Everett. Next month, she'd be off her lease, paying month-to-month. She had been looking forward to leaving.
A new manager had arrived at her complex. Maybe things would improve under him. He'd taken an interest in a lot of the obvious problems, like the perpetually overflowing dumpster, and the unkempt lawn and shrubbery. Nothing had happened yet, but he hadn't been around that long, either. She knew he was motivated to do something about the dumpster, because he had been struggling with several bags when she'd taken her own bags out.
He was cute, too, in an older, been-around-the-block-and-beaten-the-crap-out-of-the-muggers-in-the-alley way. She snorted. She wished she could say to herself he wasn't her type, but it wasn't as if she had a type, it had been so long. Besides, he had to be at least six feet tall. He was slender and muscular and had good teeth. He didn't have the body of a man who spent all his spare time in the gym, and his haircut was more practical than stylish, but he looked like the kind of man who put a reasonable amount of effort into looking good even when he wasn't out on a date, or interviewing for a job. That plus his coloring surely added up to tall, dark and handsome. That was everyone's type, right?
She tried to imagine what it would feel like to run her fingers through his extremely short hair, while he gazed lustfully at her with those dark, dark, eyes. She'd seen him in a tank top once, and even from a distance she could see the ripple of muscle in his arm, across his shoulders and back. It would be fun to be around a man she could look up to, even when she was wearing heels. At five foot eight, that wasn't always possible. At least ten minutes disappeared into Joanna's reverie about her new apartment manager.
Suddenly remembering her lunchtime resolution to call recruiters, Joanna closed her office door. Returning to her desk, she found the napkin, set it down to the left of her keyboard and smoothed it as best she could. It was stained from the seafood cioppino she'd ordered, and that dark bit looked like merlot. If she worked in Seattle, she could surround herself with napkins stained with some of the best food in the world. The idea propelled her into action.
Pulling up her resume on her computer, she noted the last update had been over a year ago. While she had been looking for a job in college, the career counselors emphasized the importance of keeping a resume up to date, rather than waiting for unemployment, then forgetting all the projects one had worked on at previous jobs. Everything she had read in the business section of the newspapers over the years about looking for a new job had reiterated that advice. She had followed it, but it hadn't occurred to her she should have that resume out where other people could see it until Lisa had given her that stunned what-century-did-you-spring-from look.
She added a paragraph about her work under Kathryn, then trimmed the existing text to fit on one page. When helping to hire Christene, Joanna had learned how tedious it was to read through multipage resumes that annoyed more than informed.
When Joanna caught herself fiddling with formatting, she pulled up another program to convert the resume to HTML. She punched in the first of the numbers on the napkins, and asked for the name written next to it. She was told he had "moved on". She made a note on the napkin, and called the next number. At that agency, the person she asked for was out for the rest of the afternoon. She chatted briefly with the receptionist, asking, "When people send in their resumes, is there any provision for confidentiality, you know, to make sure their current employer doesn't find out the person is looking for a job?"
The receptionist replied, "We try, but it's hard when the companies who are hiring call to check the current employer for references."
Joanna didn't know what to say. She thanked the receptionist, and hung up. Shouldn't it be possible to make sure the resume didn't have a name attached? Weren't they taking basic precautions? She called Lisa.
"They said what?" asked Lisa. Joanna told her again. "That's pathetic. I swear businesses just don't give a damn about protecting customer privacy. In my business, it doesn't matter much. I tell people I've got my resume out, and they treat me better. The companies I've worked for only give raises to people they're worried about losing. But I know it can be different outside of programming. Have you tried Gina at MassiveSearch yet? Or Leroy at Borg Employment? They're good, and they'll do what you want."
"I haven't. I'll try them next." Joanna put asterisks next to those names. Impulsively, she added, "You know, looking at this napkin, I'm remembering how much fun it was to go down to the waterfront to eat. If you have any spare time, let me know. My treat next time."
Lisa laughed and said she'd call to let her know. Joanna tried Gina next. She wasn't in, but was expected shortly. Joanna said she'd call back. Leroy was away from his desk. She agreed to hold and continued fiddling with the HTML version of her resume. She had it mostly to her liking by the time Leroy picked up.
"Hi, this is Leroy, how can I help you?"
"Hi, my name is Joanna. A friend of mine, Lisa Aron, recommended you to help me look for a different job."
"Lisa Aron. . . are you a programmer also?"
"No, she suggested when I call you I should ask if someone else at your agency might be better suited to place a technical manager."
"That's what you do now?"
"I manage a mix of people right now, but I enjoy managing programmers and would like to move towards that in the future."
After a moment's pause, Leroy asked. "You like managing programmers? Excellent. Do you have an up-to-date resume you can fax or e-mail to me?"
"Either works for me. Do you have a preference?"
"Why don't you e-mail me an HTML version and we'll go from there."
"Leroy, I'd be happy to do so, but I'm a little worried about my current employer finding out I'm looking for a job. You may contact the person I report to directly, and I'll give you her direct line, but I'd prefer no contact through HR other than to confirm employment, as for a credit check. Can you assure me of that level of confidentiality?"
Leroy paused before answering, "Not a problem. Always a pleasure to work with someone who knows what she wants and how to ask for it without any additional confusion." He rattled off an e-mail address.
Joanna typed it in as he spelled it out to her and once he had confirmed it, added a subject line, then sent off the HTML version she had just finished. The Web had its moments, she thought, feeling a slight buzz of efficiency.
"I just sent you the resume--" said Joanna.
"I just got it, Ms. Leonard. Looks great. I'll call you when we've had a chance to review it."
The phone clicked as Joanna was saying goodbye. She had absolutely no idea when she'd hear from him. Crossing her fingers, she called Gina's number.
Gina was in, but not at her desk. While listening to hold music, Joanna brought the intranet employee benefits page up to experiment with the web-to-fax feature on her browser. She entered the phone number for the fax machine just outside her office door and sent it off. Putting the hold music on the speaker phone, she darted out to see if it had faxed. It was coming out of the fax machine. Joanna thought, amazing how much you can learn when you choose not to work for a few hours. She closed the door and sat down. Just as she took the hold music off the speaker phone, Gina picked up.
The conversation proceeded as with Leroy, only Gina emphatically did not want anything e-mailed to her, HTML or otherwise. She told a couple of humorous horror stories about weird porno pages that got attached when people e-mailed resumes. Joanna wasn't sure if that was a joke, but she got the fax number and sent the resume. Gina was saying goodbye when she interrupted herself to ask, "Did you just fax me the resume?"
Joanna said, "Yes. No time like the present, I say." As soon as the words passed her lips, she wondered if she sounded flip.
Gina replied, "I guess you're right. Look, I'll call tomorrow, and let you know whether we've got anything you might like. Sound good?"
Surprised, Joanna said, "Sounds great. Talk to you then!"
Joanna cracked her knuckles and sat back in her chair. Not bad for a spur-of-the-moment attempt to goad her employer into firing her. What could she do next? She snapped her fingers, recalling her promise to Christene. She needed to contact someone in technical writing and get the other pieces together to make the feature comprehensible, that is usable by real customers. She could call Amy. Joanna knew Amy a little better than the rest of the technical writers, because they'd met socially at Lisa's parties.
Joanna wasn't sure how Lisa knew Amy. Joanna often wasn't sure how Lisa knew anyone, although she certainly knew a lot of people. Maybe she would ask Lisa for tips on networking.
In the meantime, Joanna called Amy's extension and invited her for coffee.
"Coffee? Heck, yeah. I was just trying to find someone to go with. Catch you at the elevator."
Joanna didn't have a chance to say yes before Amy hung up. Hurriedly, Joanna saved the changes to her resume, and closed the file. She grabbed her purse and jacket and headed for the elevators. Amy was waiting for her. "Hey, I love the new glasses, Jo. The little, little squares are cool. They make your eyes stand out." Amy leaned in closer to peer directly into Joanna's eyes. "Are they blue or green? I've never been able to tell?"
Joanna grinned. Trust Amy to break the ice fast and thoroughly. "A little of both. It depends on what I'm wearing."
"That's cool. You should think about bangs. I mean, I like your hair but I think a long fringe would be trendy and help keep it out of your face without those barrettes." Joanna nodded to acknowledge the advice. She liked having her hair all one length, but tucking it behind her ears all the time did get tiresome. The length was forgiving. The slight wave made it flip up at her shoulders. She could wait a while between trims without it looking noticeably different. The color wasn't the best, just a light, unmemorable brown. She was sure Amy didn't mean to criticize. She was just trying to help Joanna make it look better, even if it would mean more effort.
While they were waiting in line at the coffee shop, Amy asked, "What's the status on that bee Anthony's got up his butt?"
Joanna laughed and said, "You read my mind. I think it's interfering with his ability to think, since he keeps his head in the same general location, anatomically speaking. But I've gone ahead and asked Christene to make the modifications to the code, and I was wondering if anyone in--"
"Done and done. I've got the readme to go with the patch, a web page, and pages to insert in the manual. Give QA the bytes and we'll all be ready to roll, assuming Christene is going to leave the interface she proposed alone. If she changes anything, we all have to do a little more work." Joanna paused for a long moment. She wasn't sure what to say. She felt like her fairy godmother had shown up and granted all her wishes without even having to be told what they were. A fairy godmother who spoke exclusively in the jargon of the online world, but still.
Amy laughed at the look on her face. "Feel like the door you've been pushing on gave way? Yeah, well, that's what it's like when you go back to dealing with human beings after being cooped up with Anthony for a while. We all sympathize."
"Why is he like that, anyway?" Joanna asked idly, her main topic for conversation having been eliminated.
"No one stops him from being like that, because they figure that his cousin, the CFO, won't let anything bad happen to him. I used to think that was a reasonable theory, but no one is letting the bad news get to the CFO, who must care if bad things are happening to his company, wouldn't you think?" Amy asked.
Joanna nodded. She hadn't thought of the possibility of nepotism. She should have. In many ways it was still a family business, even though it was traded publicly.
"And it's not like they're part of the president's family. I think they could both get the ax if it got bad enough. Some of the things Anthony's said leave us open for a class action suit based on racial and sexual discrimination. Not to mention that he's an idiot who doesn't respond to any kind of real world feedback." Amy shrugged. "But Anthony's dull. Guess what I heard?"
Joanna said, "I have no idea, but at this point, I'm hanging on your every word."
Amy laughed, "Great to be in the loop, ain't it? Yvette, who is one of my manager's peers in technical writing, up and lateral from me, is looking for a job and you'll never guess where." Amy looked at her expectantly.
Since all her other risks lately had paid off, Joanna volunteered, "Abracadabra?"
Amy's eyebrows shot up and said, "Yeah. What do you know?"
"Not much, other than that she has company, but you didn't hear it from me." Joanna felt reckless, which covered up the slight twinge of disloyalty.
Amy nodded and said, "You're right about that. I heard about Kathryn's offer from Tim. His girlfriend works in HR at Abracadabra so Tim keeps me mostly up to date. Did you know Lisa was thinking about going there?"
Confronted with yet another example of how everyone navigated the small high-tech community in the Pacific Northwest with much more skill than her, Joanna countered, "Yes. Has Lisa talked to you about her concerns yet?"
Amy rolled her eyes. "Me and everyone else, even you. Whoops! Didn't mean it like that! We all like you, but you don't participate in the information chain, if you know what I mean."
Joanna shrugged. Once again, her efforts to appear connected had failed miserably. "I'm starting to realize what I'm missing, but if you were to consider me an oblivious babe in the woods, you wouldn't be that far off the mark. Any advice on how to get up to speed?" Maybe Lisa was right. Maybe she just needed some advice, some tips on how to improve. Certainly watching other people enviously wasn't helping her much.
Amy thought for a moment. "Are you done with your coffee? I've got a meeting in about fifteen minutes so I should be heading back."
Joanna drained her cooling coffee, and tossed it and the napkin in the garbage can. "Ready when you are."
They left the coffee shop. Amy continued, "You've started the right way. Call people up for coffee, ask questions, volunteer a little information. You listen well. You always have. You're a pleasure to talk to, really. You've always seemed to care although you don't say a lot. But if you offer up a few more tidbits, people will tell you bits and before you know it, you'll be one of the best sources of information around. I know you will, because it's easy to tell you things."
Joanna laughed. "I guess that's a good way to look at it. I have some skills; I'm just missing one piece of the puzzle."
Amy nodded her head vigorously. "Exactly. Trust me, I've seen people who'll never be in the loop because they never, ever stop talking. I've been one of those people! Speaking of which, want to hear some of my juicier bits?" Joanna nodded. "My current favorite is from the employee Christmas party last year. Do you know Sam, one of the project managers over on the hardware side? He's in that confusingly named Testing group, which isn't QA. They make tools that test circuits and stuff like that." Joanna nodded again. "And you know Christene, because she works for you, right?" Joanna nodded again, suddenly very interested. "Well, she's a total babe, right?"
Joanna spoke up, "Yes, she is, but she doesn't realize it at all."
Amy laughed. "She knows. No one dresses that bad by accident. She's trying to scare off the more clueless feebs who might otherwise be unable to work with her because her boobs would be too distracting. Anyway, Sam's no idiot, but he usually likes his women more tarted up, so to speak. But at the Christmas party, he had a little too much to drink, and wouldn't leave Christene alone. Sam at the time was recently engaged. He's married now."
Joanna's jaw dropped, and she stared at Amy. "Oh, no."
Amy continued her story. "Furthermore, Christene knew, and loathes his fiancee, because she's always rude to Christene, makes remarks about Christene's looks, stuff like that. So she plays along, and they find an empty office, but either Christene wanted some foreplay, or maybe she wasn't going to do the deed with him at all, but wanted a little oral lovin', if you know what I mean."
Joanna laughed. "How did you find out all this?"
Amy ticked her sources off one by one on her fingers: "I pieced it together from the security guard who walked in on them, Christene and, can you believe it, Sam told a lot of this to Tim, who told it to me." Amy shook her head. "Amazing what people will say to make sure their spin gets put on the story. And how little good it does them."
Joanna asked, "Does the fiancee know?"
Amy replied, "Open question. She doesn't work here, and no one asked her, since that would tend to prejudice the answer, wouldn't it? There were some rumors about bringing it up during the ceremony, at the 'Does anyone here know of any reason' bit, but they've never done that in any of the ceremonies that I've attended."
Joanna chuckled, and said, "That's a terrific story. Does that kind of thing happen often?"
"People getting walked in on? You'd be surprised. My favorite story is about Yvette's boss while Yvette was breast feeding. She got a huge kick out of it and told everyone. It served him right, though, because he wouldn't look her in the face for a week afterwards. He tried to get Human Resources to make her stop. Of course, he got the lecture you'd expect as a result. He wound up standing side-on to her and talking to a lot of walls, and she got away with murder for months, because he stayed out of her office when she had her door closed, even if she said 'Come In' when he knocked. He always waited for her to come out."
Joanna exclaimed, "That's great! Is that why we got that memo about breast feeding and how complaints about it wouldn't be tolerated?"
"You called it. Hey, I wish we could continue, but I've got that meeting. Shall we have coffee, oh, Monday doesn't work for me. How about Tuesday?"
"Sure," said Joanna. She went to her office in a happy blur, replaying in her mind all the small risks that had gone right today, and thinking how from now on she was going to look at certain people in a whole new light. Gossip got such a bad name, but Joanna had never understood why, because no one had ever included in her gossip before. She thought absently that she should feel guilty, but she decided she'd feel guilty after she'd discovered what exactly was so bad about gossip.
When she sat down at her desk, she felt so different from her usual self that she was unsure for a moment what she should be doing. Her e-mail included weekly status updates from all of her reports. It was turning out to be a red letter, perfect day. She couldn't remember the last time everyone had turned in a weekly status report on time. As she checked through them, she realized that Jeremy's status report was actually for the previous week, but progress was progress and shouldn't be knocked. He'd gotten months behind with his previous supervisor. At least he got work done, which made it easy to manufacture bullet points to pass up the line for him. She had never believed that even a complete novice in the kitchen would burn water when they tried to boil it, unless they were trying to make sure they never, ever, ever had to be responsible for preparing their own food. Similarly, she suspected a ploy when it came to Jeremy and anything resembling paperwork.
Her voice mailbox was empty, a sure sign it was getting late in the afternoon on a Friday. She worked on her weekly status report. In keeping with her conversation with Christene, she concocted a carefully sanitized one for Kathryn to pass up the management chain, then drafted a more accurate one as an informal e-mail to her boss. No point creating an opportunity for accident by formatting them identically. She felt better about the "skunk works" project after she had sent her reports. She wanted Kathryn in the loop, especially since had shared her plans with Joanna.
After e-mailing her reports, there wasn't much left to do. She turned her laptop off, put it in her briefcase and closed it. She found her PDA, buried under a memo from some group buying a baby shower present for a coworker whose name she didn't recognize. She hit update, waited for it to finish synchronizing with her desktop computer, then removed it from its cradle. She dropped it in her purse, locked her file cabinets, took one last look around and left her office. She waved to a few people wrapping up work as she left the building.
The drive to the gym was short. The bad traffic was always gone by the time she was done at the gym. Joanna suspected everyone else was busy getting ready for a date. To be fair, she had a date tomorrow night. She couldn't feel sorry for herself, unless she stopped to remember that it was a blind date set up by a cousin she didn't particularly trust.
Once home from the gym, she showered. For dinner, she prepared a chicken and vegetable stir fry, served over rice from her minuscule rice cooker. Only the fish sauce in the stir fry, and the hot sauce she dumped all over the end result prevented this particular meal from driving her crazy with boredom, but it satisfied most of her cravings reliably. By Friday, she didn't want to think very hard about food. Maybe she would start having fish on Friday. She could move her grocery shopping day to Wednesday or Thursday. Seafood was delicious, plentiful and cheap in this area, but she didn't eat it nearly often enough.
She washed the chicken and rice down with a glass of sake and a lot of water. After the second glass of sake, it occurred to her, as it often did when she didn't have to think about getting up early the next morning, that a dip in the pool and a soak in the hot tub would be a good way to end an unusually good Friday. True, she risked running into a bunch of kids, and the spa might be closed because of problems with the chemicals. If she were to read her book, sip some more sake, she might get to the spa after the kids had been dragged off to bed but before it closed for the evening.
Shortly after 9:30, she finished her book. After she'd changed into her swimsuit and a robe, grabbed her towel, slipped on her flip-flops and filled a bottle of water, only twenty minutes remained until the hot tub closed for the evening. Slipping the card key that gave her access to the spa into a pocket of her robe, and safety-pinning her front door-key to the robe, she trotted across the parking lot to the community recreation area, thinking as she ran that maybe she'd had just a teensy bit more sake than she'd planned. She wasn't driving; who could it hurt?
Maybe she'd get lucky, she thought. Maybe the kids would be gone, and the manager would be lounging around. Maybe, just maybe, he'd let her hang out after closing for a nice, quiet soak. All her other risks today had paid off. Was it so much to ask?
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Copyright 2013 by Rebecca Allen Updated July 17, 2013