Page 29 of Marcus in Retrograde
“Wait, what?” He sat up straight in his chair. “They’re changing the finals? We have no change orders.” He slammed his hand on the speaker. “Vi, do we have any change orders for the Brixton account?”
“You know we don’t, Jerry,” she huffed. “I just updated you this morning.”
“Just making sure I heard right,” he said. Jerry grabbed the phone and dialed an extension, motioning for us to just stay where we are. “Hardy, get up here.”
Sorcha grimaced, and I tossed her a confused look. “Jimmy Hardison. Our data manager. He’s a dinosaur.” Her words were whispered.
A man not much older than either of us walked in and I shot Sorcha a withering look.
She chuckled. “In IT. I meant in IT.”
“Yeah, sure,” I mumbled.
Jerry either didn’t hear us or ignored us. “Hardy, why have new files been uploaded to the server without a change order on my desk?”
“Huh?”
Jerry’s fingers flew over his keyboard, and he pulled up the files Sorcha and I were working on. There were a dozen copies there, all labeled sequentially. “These are not supposed to be on our server. What are they doing there? You’re the only one with access to upload, and it’s never to be done without a CO.”
“I got COs for those.” He hip checked Jerry out of the way and pulled up a different file. Opening it, there were a dozen, matching COs in there.
I stabbed the screen. “I’ve only been here three weeks, but those are all DOCX files, and your COs, previous to this were PDF.”
“Marcus is right,” Sorcha said. “The COs only come down the pike as PDF because Jerry does them manually and scans them in so he knows what’s going on.”
Jerry fluttered his hand at her. “Exactly. You’ve been here for fifteen years, Hardy. Why the hell don’t you know my system!”
He ran a hand down his face. “Fine. I let them upload because they said they sent the wrong file. I’ve been overwhelmed trying to keep this place organized on the back end and I didn’t think that it was going to hurt anything if I let them.”
“Fuck!” Jerry slammed his hand on the table. “They’ve been wandering through our system, Hardy?”
“Nah, no, I only let them upload—”
“You gave them access! If there was a person on their end worth their salt in IT, you gave them the key to the whole fucking system!”
“I’ve been overwhelmed—”
“Why didn’t you ask me for help!”
“I…”
“Jesus, Hardy.” He scrubbed his hand down his face. “We need to lock the whole system down, and transfer everything to a new internal server.” He pointed at Hardy. “Hire someone to help you, you moron. Don’t ever give anyone permission to upload again.” He pointed at us. “The Brixton account is frozen. Fuck ‘em. Forget ‘em. Move on to the next thing tomorrow—Monday. Whatever.”
“You got it,” Sorcha said.
He plunked back into the chair. “Look, if anyone in this company is feeling overwhelmed I want you to come to me and ask for help. We’re successful enough that if you’re running to catch up, we probably have the resources to hire someone. Hardy, seriously. Find someone who can help you manage this.”
Hardy looked devastated and relieved at the same time. “I don’t know if I can find anyone fast enough to help me, boss. I’m out of the loop with new IT guys. I only know old grizzled dudes like me, who miss reel-to-reel and aren’t convinced the Cloud is safe.”
“We’ll figure it out on Monday. Everyone go home. You’ve all done too much overtime this week as it is.” He closed the top of the laptop he had on his desk. “Seriously. Go have a beer or whatever. I’ll worry about all of this tomorrow. Hardy, just make sure you lock everyone out of the system who isn’t an employee, eh?”
“You got it, Jerry.” He nodded and walked back out of the room.
“That was nice of you not to fire him,” Sorcha said.
“He’s a good guy,” Jerry said. “I just want you all to ask me for help if you think you need it. I’m not going to fire him for an old school practice ofgrin and bear it.”
I nodded. “That’s very true. None of us should have to grin and bear it.”
