ST Bycroft

After the long bus ride to the suburbs, Paul finally got to the office. He 'swiped' in and then headed to his desk.

He stopped at the vending machines to get a coffee. It was not great out of the machines but the cafe was on the other side of the campus and he wanted to check emails for anything important before the morning stand up.

He turned the corner and headed down the row of cubicles, Bill came out of one of the aisles and said 'Hey Paul how you doing?' while at the same time, throwing a fake punch at Paul's stomach. Paul always recoiled a bit and immediately told himself, never to do that again when Bill did that.

Bill was one of those big burly, lumbering type of guys. A little too tall, a little too heavy and a little to friendly which was a bit creepy but generally an okay guy. He worked in the back office sales area. They sat near Paul's system production support group.

Bill called back as he passed Paul, 'You on for lunch today?'

Paul said 'Maybe, let's see how the morning goes'.

Paul never knew if he could go to lunch or not. It all depended on what happened last night in the system batch process and what kind of mess was in his emails.

He sat down and logged into the his PC. Plowing into the dozens of emails from over night, he looked for trouble.... system errors that he may have to deal with. He wanted to get through them before the 8:45am stand up bell. They rang a real bell. It used to be a small gong but for some reason the natives really grumbled at it so they got a bell instead. They grumbled at that too, but were told to pick one and the bell won. He still could not believe they rang a bell to call the production support staff to the meeting. Every time it rang Paul could only think of Pavlov's dogs. He even wiped the corners of his own mouth when he heard it. He wasn't really salivating, but he was just thinking of the dogs and the damn bell. They didn't need the bell, everyone had a meeting scheduled on their calendar. But they used the bell too, added effect maybe.

Bill's area had a bell too, but it seemed like a happy bell. When it rang that meant someone made a sale and everyone in the area clapped. Paul could hear it from his cube.

When Paul's bell, ran it was more like the tolling of the bell, not happy but somewhat dreaded. They were being called to hear what horrors have befallen one of his comrades. The one who had been on call the night before and who had to deal with the bulk of the issues all night. They would all get up and lumber over to the end of the aisle where a big white board was. It listed all the critical times during the overnight processing. If the numbers were red it was a bad night, if the numbers were green it was a good night. If it was mixed who knew, good, bad or indifferent.

Sometimes you knew ahead of the meeting if it was bad since there would be a email from the person on call the night before. It would state something like '...I will not be in the office today...' or '...I'll be logged in from home in the afternoon after I get some sleep...'. Then at the meeting they would read a listing of all the systems failures the night before. In theory it was to make them aware of any issues they may need to deal with. In reality it was a scare tactic to keep the staff in line '...Next time this may be you...'.

They did it at 4:00pm too. Rang a bell for the stand up meeting to review what was coming. A way to put a sense of dread into the on-call group. Whether there was going to be problem or not they could keep them on their toes.

By the time Paul had gotten back to his desk from the stand up, Phil, the guy who sat opposite him was there. Phil was not one of the late crew he was just late, a lot. They had known each other a long time. Even before working at the bank they had worked together at another company.

Back then they were drinking buddies. Phil had gotten married and had a couple of kids. Now they were just work friends. As much as Phil would have a fun 'remember when' look on his face when talking about old times you can tell he wouldn't trade his family for anything. They were the world to him. Paul at times envied him.

Phil said ' Good morning, anything at the stand up?'

'Not for your stuff, I have a mutual fund price change to deal with' Paul replied.

Phil just shrugged, he did client file feeds and didn't care a hoot about mutual funds. He had kids and therefore no money to invest anyway.

Paul cared, he was the 'SME' (aka Subject Matter Expert, the bank loved acronyms), for the systems related to the processing of the banks investment options / products. When people found out that he worked on systems for investments, even though he just told them he was a system guy they would ask him how to invest their money hoping to get some free advice or inside information. He would explain again, he worked in systems not the investment area and the best advice he had was a diversified portfolio with low fees and they may want to talk to a fee based financial advisor. He really wanted to slap them on the side of their head and saying 'Hello...I just said I work in systems...and have you ever heard of insider trading scandals? Even if I knew anything, I'm not going to tell you and go to jail...'. Either way, people would nod their heads in understanding but with a look of '...yeah you know but are just not talking...'.

Paul finished going through his emails in his received folder (aka internal emails) and then went to the deleted folder to review any external email he got. He auto moved any emails received with @ in it to the deleted folder. And then reviewed, them before permanently deleting them. For external email addresses the bank used the first letter of your first name and then your last name. If there were two the same then the dept acronym would be added and then a number if needed. Paul's external email was Pwilson@bank.com. Most of the emails in Paul's deleted folder had a salutation of something like 'Hi Peter....'. Peter was Peter Wilson in corporate accounting. Peter's external email was Pwilson.cacct@bank.com. About a week after Peter started at the bank he had signed up to receive piles of newsletters, everything from Banking to drag racing. But he had used Pwilson@bank.com not Pwilson.cacct@bank.com. About a week and a day after Peter started at the bank Paul had started receiving a bunch of emails he thought was spam. Most were addressed to Peter. Paul had been there long enough and knew what happened, he checked with Lilly, the email administrator, to verify who it was and then called Peter on it. Peter was a kid, this was his first job, fresh out of school. Paul didn't know that. When Paul told him what was happening Peter was terrified, and in a panicked voice told him he would take care of it and hung up the phone. Paul just looked at the receiver, still in his hand and said 'idiot' before hanging it up. The next day Paul's inbox was buried in spam, ten times as much as the day before. Paul called Peter back and asked him what had happened. Peter sounded like he was about to cry.

'I unsubscribed to them!' Almost yelling into the phone. Paul realized Peter was an idiot. All he did by that was verify the email address which the spamers then would just sell everywhere, which they had done, in one day. He also found out Peter was a kid and had no idea about corporate life yet. Paul took pity on him and advised him to beware of Big Brother. He should never use the bank's systems or time for personal use. The 'Bank' watches everything, his every move, reads every email and listens to every call. He told him to look around to see if he could see a camera anywhere?

Peter very softly and innocently replied 'I can'.

Paul said 'They are watching YOU, right now'.

There was silence, then the line went dead, Peter had hung up again. Paul smiled and put down the receiver. He had pity for the kid but he was also really pissed about all the junk mail he was now getting.

He didn't lie to Peter, the bank stated it in the employee hand book. They were using the banks systems and equipment and the bank could and did spot check emails and could and did listen to any calls whenever they wanted to. They did have cameras every where, but Paul also assumed they were pointed at the pretty girls in whatever room the camera was in, knowing the banks security staff.

Paul would forward a bunch of the emails to Peter every day so he could share the pain. Within a month Peter's name was not in the email system any more, he was no longer with the bank. Paul was not surprised. After Peter was gone Paul made sure his boss knew about it so he wouldn't get any flack for getting so much spam.

He asked Lilly if she would change his Internet mail ID so he could stop getting the junk mail. She said she couldn't. He knew she could but also knew she was retiring in a few weeks and didn't care. Her function was being transferred 'off-shore', the banks name for outsourcing, so he knew it was hopeless. Instead he just wrote an email rule to auto move any external @ emails to his deleted folder with a few exceptions of his known contacts. If he missed any, Oh well, he could blame it on Peter.

After Paul got his emails up to date he spent most of the morning clearing up the mutual fund price changes and reviewed the tickets in the queue. There were always a pile in the queue but only some related to his work, he moved those to his queue. Better to get them out of the main queue or he would start getting the emails; '...is this something you do...?'.

Bill came by at his normal time, 11:45am, 'Lunch?' he asked looking at Phil and Paul.

Phil rarely went to lunch, he brown bagged it almost every day and worked while he ate. It was cheaper and he could try to leave on time to pick up his kids. Phil's wife owned some sort of manicure / pedicure beauty store. So Phil did kid duty.

Phil passed on lunch but Paul had enough for the morning and went.

They sat at the same table as always. The same basic group as always. There were about fifteen of them but usually only ten or so would show any one day.

There were multiple conversations going on. Most were some gripe or other about work. Paul normally did not get into the discussions. He would eat his lunch, nod, half the time not really hearing what was said over the din in the cafe.

Bill was talking to Joe. They were related, two cousins removed or something. They were talking of going skeet shooting again. Bill was a member of a shooting range and could bring them in as guests. Paul had gone with them one Saturday and had enjoyed it quite a bit. At least until another friend of Bill's, Jimmy, had pulled out a bottle of gin and got blasted after a few shots. Booze and guns don't mix.

Bill had gotten shot with a piece of buckshot in his ass that day. Jimmy was drunk as hell. When he yelled 'pull' to let the pigeon fly instead of swinging the gun up to shoot at the clay disk, he fell over, swinging the gun toward us and shooting it into the ground. We all turned to run but a single buck shot ricocheted off the ground and hit Bill in the ass.

He howled like hell and so loud the manager of the range came out to see what was going on. He found Jimmy passed out of the ground with a shot gun and bottle of gin next to him and Bill, hopping around grabbing his left ass cheek and howling like a mad dog. When the manager looked at Joe and I, we were just standing there with a look on our faces of 'Duhhh, we don't know nothin''.

The manager, no doubt, had visions of police and lawsuits, so he acted quickly. He went back into the range office and was out again with two other guys before you could say 'What the ...'. Jimmy, the booze and the gun were gone in an instant. He drove Bill to a 'Dr.' friend of his and had the buckshot removed and stitched up lickety-split. Bill got a free range membership and use for life. He was a very efficient American manager, sweep it under the rug as fast as you can. No questions asked.

Bill noticed Paul listening to his conversation with his cousin and asked if Paul wanted to go shooting. Paul somewhat hesitantly asked 'Who's going?'.

Bill, knowing where the question came from, smiled and said 'Just me and Joe, don't worry Jimmy's been banned from the range for life'.

Paul half laughed and replied 'I'm in then'.

After lunch Paul spent the afternoon, plowing though problem tickets. Sometimes, he could get through a half dozen tickets in an afternoon, which was great. Other times it would be just one ticket, having to claw his way though it. This time it was a good afternoon, he closed eight of them before the 4:00pm stand up meeting.

The bell rang again for the 4:00pm, to call them together to find out who would be sacrificed tonight. And to be informed about any special horrors that might be set to unfold that night.

Paul was on the phone with an account manager about his last ticket. But he stood up so the team could see he was on the phone. He knew that they would want to know if there was anything special set for 'funds' tonight. His stuff could induce havoc in the overnight process if it went wrong, so they always asked if he had anything. It didn't need to be anything he had done, just anything new happening.

When they looked in his direction, he shook his head no. Liz almost fell over in relief. So she was the sacrifice on call tonight.

Copyright (c)  ST Bycroft  2015