“You mean, get ahead like ‘welcome to the rat race and may I slit your throat’ get ahead?”
“No, I mean, ‘Craig is one of many breathing down my neck, so I like a little distance because hot breath on my neck feels weird’ get ahead.”
She snorted. “Believe it or not, there are plenty of women who would enjoy closer proximity to Craig.”
“If there are women who want men with bigger salon bills than them, I believe it.”
“It’s true. Remember, HR is an acronym for Hilarious Rumors. He is a wanted man.”
“Ew.”
“It takes all kinds,” she mumbled around a mouthful of bread. “What did he do this time?”
“He’s being extra helpful,” I complained.
“The problem is . . .”
“I just don’t buy it,” I said. “Craig does only what gets him a step ahead. Helping me scores him minor points in the team player ratings, but it’s not the kind of glory move he normally makes. If he’s going out of his way to help, it’s because he has something else up his sleeve. It’s bugging me,” I concluded.
“But I thought Dennis specifically assigned Craig’s team to help you.”
“Yeah. I’m telling you, I don’t like it. He sends Brad over at least twice a day with something for my team.”
“How dare he do something thoughtful? You want to file an official complaint? I can draft it for you right now: Jessie Taylor alleges Craig the Snitch is going out of his way to be helpful and a team player. We have to nip this kind of behavior in the bud. What if he starts being genuine? No, ma’am. I’ll fast track your complaint in my office tomorrow morning.”
“Should I throw my veggie crisps or my sandwich at you?” I asked.
“Neither. The sandwich will fall apart, and the veggie crisps are too light. But I can duck faster than you can throw, so don’t bother looking for anything else either,” she said.
“Come to think of it though, I do want to file a complaint,” I said. “Against you. For creating a hostile work environment.”
“You’re the one threatening to throw stuff,” she pointed out.
“Oh yeah. Can I accuse you of anything that will stick?” I asked.
“Nope. I know how to hide my trail,” she answered.
“All right. I tried my best, but if you aren’t going to write up Craig or yourself, I don’t have any ideas for what you should work on this evening,” I said. “I’m going to sit here for another five minutes and think about what Craig is up to while I digest my sandwich, and then I’m wading through more time sheets. Want to join me?”
“About as much as I want a poke in the eye from a sharp stick.” She grimaced. She pushed out of her chair and gathered her wrappers from my desk. When she got to the door, she turned and said, “I’m calling it a night. It’s too spooky in here after hours.” She studied me for a second. “Look, I’m going to tell you something off the record. One of our HR admins, Lisa, has been spending time with Craig. She let it slip to him that he’s been ruffling more than your feathers around here with his attitude lately and he might want to think about how he comes across. I guess he took it to heart because he’s been playing nice with everyone since. It might not be sincere, but I think he’s smart enough to kiss up, so maybe you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Take it for what it is and be glad he’s off your back, you know?”
“Sure.” I smiled. “He hasn’t attempted any sabotage in almost a week. It’s a new record, so maybe you’re right.”
“I’m definitely right. You say that like it never happens.”
“I guess there was that one time . . .”
She snorted and headed down the hall.
I took a bite of my sandwich, chewing carefully. The turkey bacon had a strange plastic taste. Or maybe that was the low-fat mayo. Wrinkling my nose, I set the turkey club aside and decided to fire up another Lean Cuisine in the microwave later.
I considered Sandy’s tip. It would be a novel feeling to let Craig do his team player routine without having to worry about his ulterior motives. If he only wanted to improve his likeability quotient, there probably wasn’t anything to worry about.
Probably.
When it came right down to it, I’d much rather do my job, minus the Craig distraction. If he was trying to improve his image, I could definitely count on him to become the Happy Little Office Elf to resolve his interoffice PR problem. Choosing to trust Sandy’s information, I gave my full attention to the time sheets looming in my “in” basket, even tapping the part of my brain I reserved for keeping an eye on Craig.
Heaven knew I needed some priority changes myself. I shrugged it off and reached for my keyboard. Might as well tackle the problems I could do something about. I sank into the numbers blinking from my monitor.
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
MY TOES CURLED WHEN BEN’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?”
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