4. Phone Calls and Stress #3
Noah nodded to himself. Neither Jackie nor Simon would accept perceived injustices, but hard facts were something they could work with.
And based on past experiences with Rick, the log would also include cost estimates to drive home the point that Caprock was paying for the consultants' time, which was a waste of money if they were sitting around twiddling their thumbs.
He stood and stretched. The coding sessions the last few weeks had been tense and his body was feeling it. A gym session tonight might be just what he needed to ease the tightness from his muscles.
A reminder of her Tuesday night movie date with Lucinda popped up on Claire's screen. "Shoot!"
She looked at her kitchen counter in astonishment.
The sandwich she'd made when she got home from work was nothing but crumbs and the ice cubes in her tea glass had turned into water.
The light that normally streamed in from the living room windows had dimmed with the sunset and shadows stretched throughout her apartment.
Time had really gotten away from her. She'd only meant to spend a moment reviewing the idea she wanted to present to the project team, but had instead thought of an improvement and spent the last two hours tweaking the solution she'd played with over the weekend.
The reminder notification glaring at her from her laptop got her moving. She saved the file she'd been updating and gathered her pens, notes, and other work papers. It was movie night and—Yikes! The stove clock told her she only had ten minutes to get ready.
By the time Lucinda pinged her, she'd changed into the cotton tee and shorts that served as pajamas and was tucked up comfortably in her bed, ready for movie night. Thank goodness for microwave popcorn; ready in a jiffy! She joined the video call and waited to see Lucinda's face.
"What's up, lady? Did you decide which flick we're watching? The light and fluffy chick flick or the Wall Street power woman takes on the good ol' boys' club?"
Ugh. Claire had completely spaced on their movie choices and was not in the mood for anything intense tonight. "Not feeling the high drama right now. Too close to home."
Lucinda paused and turned to face the camera on her end. "What's up Claire-bear?"
Claire blew out a harsh breath and unloaded on her friend. "Remember when I told you how this job was going to be worry free with zero problems from other employees?"
"Uh oh, I sense a story coming on." Claire watched Lucinda get comfy on what she called her big, ugly couch. "Spill."
Claire recapped what happened in the team meeting last Thursday. "He basically set me up as the bad guy right off the bat," she concluded. "And this process is U-G-L-Y. It's this one-off little script they run, but it's awkward." She described the script and how it worked.
"Why would they have something so clunky? Are they any good at their jobs?" Lucinda stuffed a french fry into her mouth.
"I think it's because they all did their own thing.
There's no formal process. It's easy to just write a little script to get what you need when you don't have to go through the chain of command.
But Simon is laying down the law and making all the cowboys play by the rules.
" Claire sighed. "My problem is that it's taking too long and I'm sure they're frustrated every time they put in a request and I can't get to it right away.
Yesterday, I was at lunch when I got two separate requests from them.
I just know I'm getting blamed for slowing them down. "
"So, what's the plan?" The camera wobbled as Lucinda leaned over and reached for something.
"Well, I was in the middle of my second batch of fried pies?—"
"Stress-baking again, I see. What flavor this time? Oh, and homemade dough or quick-and-dirty canned biscuits?"
"Apricot and canned biscuits. I found some really great peach and apricot preserves at the market. Also, why do you care whether I did full-on homemade or used prepared ingredients?"
"It signals how stressed you are. The more stirring, pounding, and rolling you do, the more you're working out your stress. Pre-made biscuits with store-bought preserves mean minor stress. Okay, now that we've gotten the important stuff out of the way, back to the story."
"Huh. I never knew that about myself." Claire laughed. "Anyway, while I was rolling out the dough, something clicked in my head. I did some research and played with it over the weekend and am presenting it at our Thursday meeting. Fingers crossed."
"No doubts from this end. You'll do fine. What about the eye-roll dude? Is he one of the programmers?"
Claire scowled. "No, he's an expert on the project.
But he's part of the core team because he's done all the things and knows everything.
Problem is, he's not very available. He's supposed to be my go-to person for answers on how things work, but I can't ever reach him and he doesn't return my calls.
Whatever. He's a future me problem. It's the upload process I want to conquer first. If I can get in good with my fellow developers, I can win over Mr. Grumpy Pants later. "
"Ha! I like his new name. We'll keep it. Okay, so light and fluffy then on the movie choices?"
Claire pressed her lips together. "No, I've changed my mind. I need the power woman thumbs her nose at dudes in charge vibe tonight."
"Atta girl! All right. Let's do this."
Noah scrubbed his face with two hands as he listened to the latest voicemail Claire Broussard left on his phone.
So many questions from this one. To be fair, they were intelligent questions, and she never asked the same one twice.
The problem was he couldn't discern if they were aimed at learning what she needed to know to do her job or if they were digging into what the team was up to, so she could report back to management.
The rest of the core team was back in Houston and they'd been able to spend time with the new developer. Noah wanted to get Rick's take before scheduling a call with her, but hadn't gotten the chance to reach out to his mate. Balancing two jobs at once was sucking up all his time.
In the meantime, he'd adopted the approach his accounting buddies used when dealing with auditors: answering as minimally as possible to give the information she needed without expanding into details beyond her initial question.
He figured that way, he'd be doing his job without giving anyone ammunition to fire at the team.
He sighed and sent Claire an email to let her know he received her voicemail and her assumptions were correct.
Noah stretched his arms, then twisted his torso from left to right.
Last night's workout had helped, but he was sore this morning.
Obviously, he'd been skipping too many gym nights.
He reread Claire's latest email. If she wasn't a spy for upper management, he was probably handling this situation completely wrong and doing her a disservice.
He hoped the dev team figured out how to make it work soon.
He didn't enjoy being put into this position and it made him irritable.
During yesterday's coding session, Del's whining had Noah wondering if they'd notice if he hung up.
Rick did an admirable job of letting them vent while staying neutral.
But man, all that negativity was getting to him and he wanted to tell them all to shut it.
He shook off his irritation and pulled up the list of action items for his upcoming trip to Houston.
Most were project-related, but a few pertained to his career track.
The company operated around the world and he wasn't against relocating.
If other advancement opportunities were available, he wanted to know about them regardless of where in the world it might take him.
At the bottom of the list, he added a note to ask Jackie outright if VIG's relationship was in jeopardy and if she'd heard anything threatening Rick's position.
He was tired of sitting around waiting for the hammer to fall, and his friend didn't need the additional worry of not knowing.
Putting himself in the line of fire is probably what his mother meant when she'd lectured him about being fiercely loyal to his detriment.
He smiled at an image of her standing with one hand on her hip and the other waggling a finger in his face.
Openly confronting management on gray areas wasn't a new move for him, so he wasn't concerned about any fallout for him personally.
And in fact, doing so might move the target—if one existed—from Rick to him, which would work fine.
He had a reputation for speaking up and saying what others wouldn't, so no one would blink if he raised a stink.
And voicing the concern might actually clarify the new girl's role.
Yep, time to get everything out in the open, so I can stop stressing over every damn little thing.
In fact, he was going to shoot the opening shot right now.
Why wait another two weeks for more knots to show up in his neck?
He drafted a new email and addressed it to Simon.
Perhaps the de facto project manager was unaware of exactly how unproductive the dev team was with the new bottleneck he'd implemented.
He typed up a summation of the complaints he'd caught during yesterday's coding session and fired off the email before he could second-guess himself.